Faculty at Harvard have adopted a plan to fight grade inflation by capping the number of As that can be awarded in any particular class. But I fear that this plan will fail to stem the tide of grade inflation, as have most other previous attempts.
Grade inflation has long been acknowledged as a severe problem in academia. Academic work that would have gotten a B a generation ago now gets an A. From 1990 to 2020, college grade point averages (GPAs) increased by 21.5 percent. At some colleges, such as Yale, As and A minuses account for 80 percent of grades.
Harvard’s brute-force strategy to fight grade inflation isn’t without precedent. It falls in a long line of attempts to curb the practice. The Trump administration, for example, included a proposal to combat grade inflation in its recent compact, but the federal government lacks the authority, capacity, or trust to lead such an effort.
The problem past efforts have run into isn’t a lack of awareness or even a lack of will. It’s that no single institution can act alone without putting itself at a competitive disadvantage. But in an insightful piece, David Eubanks identified the key player that could solve this coordination problem: accreditors. To see why accreditors are uniquely positioned to reverse the trend, we first need to understand what’s driving grade inflation and why previous efforts to combat it have failed.
What’s Driving Grade Inflation?
There is a significant incentive for all actors in academia to accept artificially boosted grades.
Students are the most willing to accept grade inflation. And who can blame them? The boss who offers more money for less work would have many takers among his employees. Students are no different and will, as a general rule, gladly accept higher grades and a lower workload.