Is it time to abolish college grades entirely? Why American universities are handing out too many A's

[zohaibahd]

Getting out of hand: Grade inflation in American universities is a real problem, but hardly anything has been done to address it. The statistics are staggering. The average GPA at elite schools like Harvard has skyrocketed from 2.6 in 1950 to 3.8 today. In 2023, a mindblowing 80 percent of all grades at Yale were either A or A-.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed by German-American political scientist and author Yascha Mounk argues the core issue is that universities increasingly view students as "prized customers," thanks to forever-rising tuition costs. So they cater to their demands and lifestyles. Giving out a bunch of As is an easy way to satisfy the clientele.

Additionally, Mounk suggests some professors have grown uncomfortable wielding authority over students as evaluators. He points out that a culture of "politeness" and a "greater fear of giving offense" in the US discourages giving critical feedback. This dynamic is quite different from that of England, where Mounk taught. He says teachers there were encouraged to present student assessments as a "poisoned Oreo cookie" where criticism is still a thing, except smartly sandwiched between layers of chocolate (praise).

Mounk contends that the American way of doing things has rendered the whole grading system meaningless. Everyone scores an A, and students can no longer gauge their actual performance.

"The current grading system favors mediocre kids from stable homes over talented ones from less stable backgrounds," he added.

Employers can't pick suitable candidates either, possibly exacerbating the talent shortage in tech. Additionally, nearly 60 percent of young applicants now use generative AI for job applications. It's a recipe for disaster.

As a possible solution, Mounk gives the example of Harvard's recently retired professor Harvey Mansfield, who fought back by giving students their "real" and "ironic" grades – the former based on stringent standards, the latter contorted to university norms. However, workarounds like this are insufficient band-aids. The straightforward solution would be restoring meaningful standards – grading on a strict curve, capping high grades, or adopting more granular scoring systems.

This philosophy aligns with another op-ed from last year by Tim Donahue of The New York Times, requesting professors use the B- for college essays more often as it pushes the student to make the necessary corrections and realize the essay's true potential rather than giving it an "early, convenient death." However, Mounk points out that universities adopting unpopular reforms would risk tanking in the rankings.

His radical proposal is that since the grading system has become an irreparable "charade," universities should just abolish grades altogether in favor of pass/fail scoring. Some elite grad schools have already made this change. Mounk concludes that entirely tossing out grades could be the "least bad option" until a brighter day when academia finds the will to start fresh with honest evaluations.

Image credit: Caroline Culler

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Is it time to abolish college grades entirely? Why American universities are handing out too many A's

 

[seeprime]

I have a niece who teaches at four universities in Colorado. Her biggest complaint is that students today, hopefully not tomorrow, are entitled brats. She is pressured to give better grades, but refuses to. If a student doesn't earn an A they wont get one. She's sought after by more universities due to her style of teaching instead of coddling. There is still hope for the future.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The solution to "grade inflation" is not to remove grades. It is to start grading ACCURATELY, not based on a student's race, background, "socio economic factors" or state interests, but on the work that student performs. Have we learned nothing from the removal of grades from elementary, then middle, and now high schools? All it does is pass the buck of inevitable failure for bad students further into their lives, and leave less time to correct issues.

School should be tough, but fair. Students should be given the same opportunity, and help if they are falling behind. By appealing to the lowest common denominator, schools have successfully undermined their very purpose and sabotaged entire generations of students to cater to the slowest. Meanwhile, the private schools that challenge students and do not cater show far better results then public education can muster.

Still, watching colleges remove all ability to judge if their students are actually capable of anything is well within what I expect from them these days, and will only further make college a worthless institution. After all, it was the colleges themselves that taught multiple generations of teachers to think any failing of a student was the system's fault, and the teachers that still couldnt hack it became the educational department politicians passing these insane rules for how schools cant fail kids. It's a rotten system that rewards incompetence that has needed remedied for decades.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Perhaps inflated grades at big colleges or ivy leagues are a result of big donations they get too. Grading pushes you to learn and face challenges. Could it be that too much democracy is ruining this Country? As seen by the Bilderberg Group.

 

[toooooot]

The solution to "grade inflation" is not to remove grades. It is to start grading ACCURATELY, not based on a student's race, background, "socio economic factors" or state interests, but on the work that student performs. Have we learned nothing from the removal of grades from elementary, then middle, and now high schools? All it does is pass the buck of inevitable failure for bad students further into their lives, and leave less time to correct issues.

School should be tough, but fair. Students should be given the same opportunity, and help if they are falling behind. By appealing to the lowest common denominator, schools have successfully undermined their very purpose and sabotaged entire generations of students to cater to the slowest. Meanwhile, the private schools that challenge students and do not cater show far better results then public education can muster.

Still, watching colleges remove all ability to judge if their students are actually capable of anything is well within what I expect from them these days, and will only further make college a worthless institution. After all, it was the colleges themselves that taught multiple generations of teachers to think any failing of a student was the system's fault, and the teachers that still couldnt hack it became the educational department politicians passing these insane rules for how schools cant fail kids. It's a rotten system that rewards incompetence that has needed remedied for decades.

Giving fair grades means that one specific group will or already have noticeably higher failure rate.
And in our society, where almost everything negative is interpreted as injustice when it is done to several specific groups, a lot of teachers might be tempted to give better grades out of fear of being called racists.
The right way is focusing on kids of the lower achieving groups. Few people would be against funding school for the groups that can barely finish school and completely fail college.
But we can't because the reason was already found, evil people who set their life goal to make sure these specific groups underachieve. It is a lie that too many are willing to take rather than doing something that requires effort.
It makes me even more bitter when the teachers of the worst schools for the mentioned groups speak of everything except why they still have their jobs.

 

[Subset6]

If you have not realized by now that "higher education" is just a racket I don't know what to tell you.

 

[NotYourITguy]

Perhaps the real issue is that people in society place far too much faith on meaningless and very arbitrary measures of alleged achievement. College grades are ultimately meaningless. It does not matter if you graduated with perfect grades or mediocre scores in terms of how competent you are at your job. Something something the old adage about judging a fish by how well it can climb trees.

Some of the brightest people I've met never were academically gifted according to their transcripts, yet anybody who ever spoke with them could tell they were clearly gifted in their craft. One of them now runs their own semiconductor design firm and "allegedly" signed a licensing deal for their IP to a GPU company.

 

[Dr Roboto]

As someone that has been both part of higher education and in a position to hire college graduates, I do not put a lot of emphasis on grades (GPA). I always look for the people with the extra things like research projects and additional work that sets them apart. Getting good grades does not always translate well to being a productive employee. Anyone trying to get the best possible job with just a GPA is going to struggle.

As for grade inflation, many institutions use student evaluations of faculty as a component in decisions related to tenure, promotions, and pay raises. This creates pressure on instructors to give higher grades to avoid negative evaluations from students (this teacher is too hard). As universities compete to attract students, some have been accused of inflating grades to make their institution more appealing by showing better student outcomes (We are the best, just look at our average GPA). Additionally, there has been less emphasis on penalizing students for poor performance and a greater focus on encouraging success (everyone gets a trophy).

 

[brucek]

The average GPA at elite schools like Harvard has skyrocketed from 2.6 in 1950 to 3.8 today. In 2023, a mindblowing 80 percent of all grades at Yale were either A or A-.

These students are not a random sample of the population. They are at Harvard and Yale precisely because their high school record reflected a near top 1% ability to master every course thrown at them. It should not be a surprise that most of them continued to do so throughout their college career (and beyond.)

To me, an "A" grade should have the objective meaning of the material was thoroughly understood and can be applied with finesse. As a recruiter or evaluator it would not do me any favors to give someone who had that knowledge and ability a "C" merely because that same class also included future Einsteins and Hawkings. That's what letters of recommendation are for where that level of distinction is truly required.

In any event I suppose any questions could be put to rest just by including the grade distribution curve for each course on the transcript, along with hopefully a standardized explanation of what grading system was used.

 

[godrilla]

Yesterday I found out that their are colleges with less than 5% graduation rates in the states.

 

[Dimitriid]

Well of course they're getting good grades: they're *customers* first and foremost: the natural consequence of private universities as for profit entities is that they're designed to just push students through the maximum amount of those lucrative, predatory student loans they make unreasonable amounts of money from.

You want actual merits and grades that mean something? Make some if not most universities public and free to almost everybody. You might even get other consequences like students taking other majors that are not designed to being able to have the vaguest of hopes of repaying student loans one day: there's always going to be enough money-minded people to still go for the lucrative STEM careers and MBAs with the added benefit that they might actually have to be somewhat competent to graduate now.

 

[Squid Surprise]

These students are not a random sample of the population. They are at Harvard and Yale precisely because their high school record reflected a near top 1% ability to master every course thrown at them. It should not be a surprise that most of them continued to do so throughout their college career (and beyond.)

no… it should… because these same people were getting lower GPAs 70 years ago. The people at Harvard, Yale, etc have ALWAYS been the top 1%ers… but their marks are now much higher…

Our culture of entitlement and that “the student is never wrong” has gone out of control. I’m an elementary school teacher where we are not allowed to fail anyone - and haven’t been for years… it’s insane!

 

[sdms96825]

Two words for this:

participation trophy

 

[hahahanoobs]

If they gave bad grades they couldn't keep raising the cost of tuition, housing and food.
Higher education is a business.

 

[yRaz]

Colleges, at this point, are just jails you pay to goto. They offer very little, you won't get a job and I haven't used my degree in 13 years. I majors in computer science and minored in engineering. I ended up being a cement Mason and I do commercial construction.

 

[noblody]

Colleges, at this point, are just jails you pay to goto. They offer very little, you won't get a job and I haven't used my degree in 13 years. I majors in computer science and minored in engineering. I ended up being a cement Mason and I do commercial construction.

Probably the more experience you have in the field you apply, the less important is the degree. But nonetheless, having a relevant degree means that you have a foundation on which to build.

 

[FaTaL]

You can't fix stupid.

 

[Lowhangingfruit]

I had a couple of professors at university who explicitly said from the outset that they "did not give As". Your baseline grade for any project was a C. When you asked them how you could improve they just gave vague answers about trying harder and doing better. They basically "knew an A when they saw it."

Having an unrealistic standard that you can't articulate and don't know how to teach and coach students to achieve is not any better.

Yes some students may be entitled, but there are also entitled and arrogant professors who don't know how to teach. Then your grade becomes the luck of the draw. Frankly I prefer grade inflation for everyone.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I had a couple of professors at university who explicitly said from the outset that they "did not give As". Your baseline grade for any project was a C. When you asked them how you could improve they just gave vague answers about trying harder and doing better. They basically "knew an A when they saw it."

Having an unrealistic standard that you can't articulate and don't know how to teach and coach students to achieve is not any better.

Yes some students may be entitled, but there are also entitled and arrogant professors who don't know how to teach. Then your grade becomes the luck of the draw. Frankly I prefer grade inflation for everyone.

While there are bad apples in every profession, university/college students USED to be expected to understand what an "A" was...Compulsory schooling (kg-gr 12) was SUPPOSED to give everyone the fundamentals on learning how to learn - and having the basics necessary to complete "higher education".

Students PAY to go to college and were expected to want to be there, complete their readings, and should never have had to have "what does an A look like" explained to them, as they'd have learned it back in middle school...

Unfortunately, now, we teach very little up to Grade 12 other than - everyone succeeds... of course... in the real world they DON'T.... but instead of learning that at 12, they are learning it at 20...

 

[mbk34]

We have a slightly different issue here in the UK. When I went to university it was free but only around 10% of young folk were taken. We also applied for whatever course took our interest. I was fortunate because I enjoyed computer programming and it turned out to be very vocational.

These days 50% of young folk now go on to university and that dilutes the value of degrees in general. They also have to pay for the courses and accommodation so most students come away with roughly a $50K debt. This also strongly influences what degrees people apply for so more students go for business studies and only a tiny few take philosophy. I don't think this is good for the health of a nation.

How does a potential employer pick between them all? My own approach when hiring students for intern jobs (in computing) was to just interview those with an interesting project, then talk about their approach to the problem which told me far more than any grade. Finally I'd try and find out if they had a spark of life to them as we'd have to talk to them for the rest of the year.

Here in the UK, I think students get a very poor deal. Class sizes are larger, the end degree is worth less, jobs seem harder to come by, rent and house prices are unobtainable plus they have that $50K debt hanging round their necks. It was even worse for my younger son who did his degree during Covid and seemed to do most of his course via zoom. I wonder now whether I should of told my kids to be electricians or plumbers.

 

[yRaz]

Probably the more experience you have in the field you apply, the less important is the degree. But nonetheless, having a relevant degree means that you have a foundation on which to build.

Well, what it really came down to for me is that I make more and get treated better in the union than I did at any tech company. And the real beauty of being innthe union is I can tell my boss to go **** himself if they make unreasonable requests

 

[Dr Roboto]

Here’s something to think about: do grades in college even make sense in today’s world? With all the talk about grade inflation and more schools moving to pass/fail systems, maybe it's time to question what grades are really doing for anyone.

Students today are paying a crazy amount of money for college—anywhere from $80K to $200K for four years. In this setup, the students are basically customers, right? They're paying for an education, but is that really what they're getting? College is big business now, and with all the pressure to go, you can almost understand why people expect high grades in return for all that cash.

This might explain why grade inflation is happening more and more. Colleges need to keep students happy, so they’re giving out higher grades. After all, who wants to shell out tens maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars and end up with a mediocre GPA that doesn't help land a job?

I get it—grades are meant to show who's working hard and who's smart. But in 2024, is GPA really the best way to measure that? What if colleges focused more on teaching real, practical skills instead of making students obsess over grades? Companies today should be looking for more than just GPAs. They want new hires who have real-world experience and can apply what they’ve learned through projects and internships. Grades alone feel like the fallback option when there’s nothing else to go on.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

It's not just colleges that give out easier grades, this $hit is trickling down to schools around me for younger kids.

The middle schools near me changed how they give out grades. It went from having under a 60% meant you failed to changing the system to be based off 100%. The BS reason the school district gave was something along the lines that making the grades fit into a 100% range made more since because it was confusing kids.

An "A" was 90-100%
NOW an "A" is 80-100%

A "B" was 80-89%
NOW a "B" is 60-79%

A "C" was 70-79%
NOW a "C" is 40-59%

A "D" was 60-69%
NOW a "D" is 20-39%

An "F" was 59% and below
NOW an "F" is below 20% and they don't call it an "F" anymore - I don't remember what they call it...an incomplete, maybe?

For example if you take a quiz that has 10 questions and each is worth a point, if you get 2 wrong you still get an "A" on the quiz. Or if you take a test that has 50 questions, each worth a point and you get 10 wrong you still get an "A". Or how about missing out on half the questions on anything still nets you a "C". How is that a "C"?

So instead of improving the education to better the kids, they adjust how the grades are handed out to give the illusion that their school system is top notch because more kids are now getting grades higher than they should be.

These education systems are scared to they might hurt a kid's feelings. A lot of these kids these days are so pussified that any kind of negativity directed towards them they just freak out, melt down and some don't know how to deal with so they lash out (in extreme cases sometimes that end in death) because they're all told they are special and that everyone is a winner and that their feelings matter.

 

[Dr Roboto]

These education systems are scared to they might hurt a kid's feelings. A lot of these kids these days are so pussified that any kind of negativity directed towards them they just freak out, melt down and some don't know how to deal with so they lash out (in extreme cases sometimes that end in death) because they're all told they are special and that everyone is a winner and that their feelings matter.

Yikes, man. I get that you're frustrated with changes in education, but your version of reality feels really out of touch with the bigger picture. Sure, things have changed since you were a kid, but simplifying today's challenges by dismissing an entire generation as "soft" or "p~$%ified" is just wrong.

You paint a nostalgic picture of the past, but I’m old enough to know that "back in the day" wasn’t some golden era where everything worked perfectly, especially not in education. Kids weren’t magically better equipped to handle adversity, and plenty of serious issues were just swept under the rug—bullying, abuse, discrimination, mental health struggles—things we’re finally addressing today.

Look, I’m not saying I love every aspect of modern education or that societal norms around kids today don’t have flaws. But pretending that harsh, old-school methods were some kind of cure-all or that today's kids are inherently weak doesn’t hold up. Every generation faces unique challenges, and it's not a sign of weakness to acknowledge mental health, emotions, or fairness—those are signs of progress.

 

[Tekpot]

It's called: College degrees inflation.
That's why no more real "scientists" and innovation.