,,,and all the children are above average

[LDAHL]

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/30/students-react-grading-report/

So I read this morning that the median grade at Harvard is an “A”. The University is studying grade inflation, and released a report that has perturbed at least some of the student body to the point of some pretty snowflakey reactions. The Babylon Bee would be hard put to out-parody some of these statements.

Is this just an Ivy sort of problem, or is it happening everywhere?

[Tybee]

for context:
The Harvard Crimson (https://www.thecrimson.com/flyby/article/2013/12/4/grade-inflation-archives/)

[iris lilies]

Our friend who taught bio-chemistry at a college of pharmacy was forced out of his job for refusal to pass students in the new age of diversity requirements. I definitely understand how important it is to recruit minority pharmacists, but this school was not getting the cream of the crop and too many students could not pass his class which had had the same standards for decades.

Because he had tenure, they moved him to teach electives such as Earth science and the like, not where his talents were. He was not happy and negotiated an early retirement.

So, any more I’m tempted to ask when the pharmacist graduated when I go into a pharmacy.

it’s going to be the same for students during Covid, I don’t know how the science kids have fared in catching up, but I’m not keen on having physicians when I’m old that were schooling during Covid. Fortunately, I might be old enough that I don’t have to face that. Feel sorry for the rest of you

[bae]

I had two classes at Princeton in the early 80s that graded on a (poorly-designed) strict curve.

In my German class, a 96/100 would get you a C.

In one of my grad Statistics class, 100/100 would get you a C.

In both cases, the professors believed "the average grade is a C, you all got a perfect score on the difficult exam, so the average is a perfect score, so you get Cs!".

Seemed daft.

In general, in that era, there did not seem to be to my eye any significant grade inflation in the STEM fields at Princeton. However, I found most of the liberal-arts classes I took (except for German) I could achieve B->A level work with minimal effort. Then again, nearly all the students of that here had arrived with near-perfect academic records, and were very capable and motivated, except perhaps for some of the wealthy legacy students who there there quite explicitly to cruise through with "the gentleman's C".

Princeton experimented for a decade with a formal "grade deflation" policy from 2004->2014. It did not have much result other than introducing controversy:

https://paw.princeton.edu/article/grade-deflation-maybe-unfair-probably-just

My daughter entered Princeton in 2015. She achieved straight-As there, and won most of the major academic awards that were relevant to her major/concentrations. And then she went on to incredible academic success at Cambridge, and her post-doc fellowships, and landed at an insanely young age a position at St. Andrews, where she just now is in her first year of being a professor. She is clearly an outlier. Most of her Princeton roommates though have also gone on to incredible success. Since roommates there are self-selected past your freshman year, this is clearly a biased sample of young folks.

When teaching at Cambridge, or attending there as a student, she reports there is not significant grade inflation, and there are active policies in place to dampen it. Oxford, where her partner teaches, has a small bit more of grade inflation. Some of the "inflation" that is occurring seem to be because of a more competitive admissions environment, that is, the incoming students are better-suited for success than the applicants of previous decades.

The UK in general seems to have a grade inflation issue at the pre-collegiate level, which seems to have pushed some of the major universities there to raise their admissions standards.

U. Washington was apparently experiencing grade inflation, and implemented some measures, especially in the STEM fields, to combat it. (Weed-out classes, explicit grade deflation). These seem to have been somewhat effective, and made people afraid to attend there on the pre-med and pre-law tracks, as they seem to fear they will be less competitive in their grad-school admissions applications. I think it has however produced higher quality engineering and science graduates, which I suspect is mostly due to the weed-out classes crushing the souls of bright-eyed kids who didn't actually have the chops to make it.

Princeton did a similar weed-out method when I attended, in the physics department. The initial year of the physics programs had 3 tracks you could select from. Tracks 1 & 2 did not lead you to a physics degree. Track 3 did, but was incredibly hard. They wanted to see at the end of sophomore year, when formal major selection was made by the students, 10 physics students making it through the gauntlet, out of the initial 100+ folks who indicated interest in majoring. (I was guy #10/11 my year, and elected to transfer to the Statistics Department, which was a graduate-level-only department at the time, and major in Statistics, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science. One of the advantages of the university at that time is that they would allow you to custom-craft a major if you gave sound reason. Out of the ~4000 undergraduate population of the time, there were ~5 of us on this track. This weed-out approach of the era produced some incredible physicists - the guy who was #1 my year was perhaps 10x better than guys 2-4, those guys were 10x better than those of us in the 10-15 range, and we were 10x better than the rest of the pack, or more. They did me a kindness, I would, in hindsight, have been not as happy in my life as a pure physicist.)

[LDAHL]

Looking into it, both Princeton and my Alma Mater in Champaign Illinois are running A- medians. I certainly don’t remember that being the case when I attended back during the Carter Administration. Our weed-out class was organic chemistry.

Either standards have slipped over the last few decades, or people are getting smarter.

[catherine]

Is the hard part actually just getting into Ivy League schools and other highly selective schools rather than staying in--with the assumption being if you got in, you are probably going to make it anyway? Is the point of getting into great schools more about making connections for future opportunities than competing academically with your peers?

Just wondering.

When I went to college there was a backlash against grades and some of the "hippy-dippy" schools abolished the grading system and used evaluations instead. My school, a small Catholic liberal arts women's college, in the early 70s, did a hybrid approach with both a grade and an evaluation. My Drama professor asked us to grade ourselves before he graded us.

[Rogar]

The best I can recall of my state universities, it was the standard curve with a C or maybe a B being average. Some of my science courses included a number of pre-med students who were sharp and or highly motivated, which made us more average students difficult to rise above the average and weeded out many. I would think from my traditional standpoint that if an A were average, the method of evaluation was too easy.

I applied for a few government jobs where a college transcript was required. I don't recall being asked about a GPA in other job applications or interviews and my basic 3.0 GPA was not worth bragging about on a resume. I suppose if you graduated from Harvard it spoke for itself?

[happystuff]

The sad part is - based on my working at the elementary school (and even as just a custodian) - the whole issue of grades and promoting to the next grade levels even though not prepared, begins at the elementary level. I've had teachers talk/vent to me about what they have to deal with regarding the education standards.

[iris lilies]

Years ago, I read An essay that claimed the real grade inflation, or maybe it was dumbing down of the curriculum, took place right after World War II when all the G.I. S came back and went to school on the G.I. Bill. Until then the college experience had been a rarefied thing with decades of traditional teaching.

Both of my grandparents went to college, each for a year or two, and it was considered a a broadening and valuable experience for just attending foe that short time.

[iris lilies]

Is the hard part actually just getting into Ivy League schools and other highly selective schools rather than staying in--with the assumption being if you got in, you are probably going to make it anyway? Is the point of getting into great schools more about making connections for future opportunities than competing academically with your peers?

Just wondering.



I have wondered about that too, given the quality education of prep schools. That’s a pipeline for those Ivys and those applying must be pretty well prepared and groomed for success so grading on a curve might not be important.

my friend whose family went to the important East Coast universities is very achievement oriented, and some of her family is quite accomplished, but not all of them.

One side of my family went to the Ivy school of the Midwest and they also are very achievement oriented but have regular job jobs or no jobs except for a couple important scientists.

[bae]

Either standards have slipped over the last few decades, or people are getting smarter.

My impression is that standards for incoming students are *much* higher than they were in my day, at least at Princeton. So I'm not surprised they do well. I have been doing admissions interviews for Princeton and a few other schools since Covid, and the quality of the applicants is extraordinary. And from my daughter's more recent experience there, her graduating class is "better" than my class was, the previous generation.

The other school I am familiar with is the engineering program at UW, and the students are very very good, for the most part.

It's a different world from the "legacy applicant cruising along with a gentleman's C" approach.

[bae]

Is the hard part actually just getting into Ivy League schools and other highly selective schools rather than staying in.

The admission rate for Princeton for the class entering in 2025 was 4.4%. The year I applied in 1981 the admission rate was 19.8%. I believe most of the other Ivy League institutions are in the same ballpark.

Even in 1981, almost every single applicant was very well qualified, except for some of the legacy candidates. Top-notch GPAs, SATs, extracurriculars, and so on. Even then, the University was able to pick-and-choose from the pool to select a well-balanced entering class. I remember distinctly during Freshman Week they had an all-class gathering, and at one point asked people to raise their hands if they were varsity athletes in high school, or school newspaper editors, or accomplished musicians, or spoke multiple languages, or ...., or .... The purpose of this I think was to make everyone realize that every single person in that room had been "a big fish in a little pond" before they arrived, but here, we were all just "average".

The admissions department constructs incoming classes more as an art than a science at this point, since almost every applicant is top-tier, and would do well.

[littlebittybobby]

okay---i tell you what---and read it, so you'll learn. But yeah----being a druggist is not something that really requires super-high intelligence. It requires a good amount of recall, just as playing Trivia Crack does, and someone who is conscientious and of good character. Lots of jobs require that. But yeah---the scholastic bar is so high that we pay salaries in excess of $100k a year, to take pills from one bottle, count them, and put them in another bottle and stick a label on it! It's absurd, that's what our system is. See? And any more, pharmacy techs with a juco diploma at most, do the actual work. So why go ta Hahvaahd to be a pill-pusher? It's not rocket science. Yup. So, anyway-----If the goal is to end class distinction, there's got to be a better way. Now you know. Thankk mee.

[iris lilies]

okay---i tell you what---and read it, so you'll learn. But yeah----being a druggist is not something that really requires super-high intelligence. It requires a good amount of recall, just as playing Trivia Crack does, and someone who is conscientious and of good character. Lots of jobs require that. But yeah---the scholastic bar is so high that we pay salaries in excess of $100k a year, to take pills from one bottle, count them, and put them in another bottle and stick a label on it! It's absurd, that's what our system is. See? And any more, pharmacy techs with a juco diploma at most, do the actual work. So why go ta Hahvaahd to be a pill-pusher? It's not rocket science. Yup. So, anyway-----If the goal is to end class distinction, there's got to be a better way. Now you know. Thankk mee.

this is ridiculous. Pharmacists need to know so much about the human body, how drugs work on them, how drugs interact with each other, etc. Pharmacists know more than doctors about this subject because it is their specialty.

Pharmacists are charged with the responsibility of denying service to patients if they believe a doctor’s script is harmful.

[LDAHL]

I have wondered about that too, given the quality education of prep schools. That’s a pipeline for those Ivys and those applying must be pretty well prepared and groomed for success so grading on a curve might not be important.

my friend whose family went to the important East Coast universities is very achievement oriented, and some of her family is quite accomplished, but not all of them.

One side of my family went to the Ivy school of the Midwest and they also are very achievement oriented but have regular job jobs or no jobs except for a couple important scientists.

A good friend of mine is a proud graduate of Washington University. He likes to boast that it is our nation’s most prestigious safety school.

While I would like to believe our fashionable and not so fashionable schools have have been flooded with academic ubermenschen, I have to think that much of the grade inflation can be attributed to a woke terror of enforcing uniform standards with no regard to surface characteristics and the bizarre practice of taking student evaluations seriously.

[iris lilies]

A good friend of mine is a proud graduate of Washington University. He likes to boast that it is our nation’s most prestigious safety school.

While I would like to believe our fashionable and not so fashionable schools have have been flooded with academic ubermenschen, I have to think that much of the grade inflation can be attributed to a woke terror of enforcing uniform standards with no regard to surface characteristics and the bizarre practice of taking student evaluations seriously.

Wash U is rated number 20 in its class and my family alma mater is rated number 13 in its class. But, one is a fairly large University with some research responsibilities and with satellite med and law schools and the other one is just a liberal arts college. I didn’t go to the family institution because I thought it was pokey and probably I couldn’t have gotten in anyway. my branch of the family is not relentlessly aspirational.

I know people who apply to Wash U and don’t get in so it’s not easy.

[littlebittybobby]

this is ridiculous. Pharmacists need to know so much about the human body, how drugs work on them, how drugs interact with each other, etc. Pharmacists know more than doctors about this subject because it is their specialty.

Pharmacists are charged with the responsibility of denying service to patients if they believe a doctor’s script is harmful.okay---credentials, schmedentials! Faux, how DARE you try and refute my brilliant statements??? But yeah----it doesn't take an advanced DEGREE to become a best-selling novelist (see photo), but apparently it DOES ta set them books on a shelf in a pubballick lirrrarrarry? Ha gotcha. Nipped your faulty reasoning in the Bud. Yup.6593