I came across the information below in today’s Morning Brew newsletter. It appears professors at one of America’s most elite universities are inflating grades. Shocker! Indeed, I don’t buy the comment from the student quoted at the bottom of the screenshot. College should be much more difficult than high school and just because a student earned A’s in high school, that shouldn’t necessarily mean they will deserve the same grades in college.

In fact, as a high school teacher, approaching three full decades in the classroom, I can say emphatically that high schools are also inflating grades. In the case of high schools the reasons for this include the incentive placed on schools to increase graduation rates and ‘equity.’ Neither of these root causes are positive developments, yet they are the current reality, at least where I teach.

Whether or not this all matters is worth thinking about. Here are a few takes on the topic: Take #1 and Take #2. The problem I have with it is that it warps the connection in the minds of students between their efforts and the quality of the outcomes of their efforts. In all of life, feedback is data. If the feedback is inaccurate, it puts people at a disadvantage as they move through early adulthood. The disconnect can lead to some serious pain (like borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for school and then flunking out). For kids coming from middle and working class families, they deserve honest feedback in the form of grades.

Privilege is a flip side to this. Many people whose lives and outcomes are boosted by privilege face the same problem of disconnect between effort and outcomes. Often their success had little to do with their efforts and a lot to do with the privilege they inherited. Considering that approximately 57% of Harvard students come from families in the top 10% of the income distribution, it is clear this is relevant give the grade inflation there.