For years, I’ve warned that college grade inflation is real, rampant, and ravaging a university near you. It is a cancer eating away at American higher education, undermining academic standards, devaluing transcripts, and cheating students and employers alike.
My research has tracked this crisis over the last decade, and the evidence is stark: what was once a merit-based system has become a hollow shell of inflated grades. Here, I summarize my case, updating the data I’ve cited with the latest figures available, and renew my call for real reform.
The numbers tell a grim story. In my 2014 study, I noted that in the early 1960s, 15% of college grades were A’s, a figure that jumped to 43% by 2011, per Rojstaczer and Healy’s study, "Where A Is Ordinary.” By 2019, 75% of grades were A’s or B’s. Today, Rojstaczer’s 2023 data shows A’s hovering at 45–47% at four-year schools, with A’s and B’s combined hitting 80% at elite institutions.
This isn’t a sign of smarter students or better teaching—it’s a collapse of standards. Grade point averages (GPAs) at public universities have climbed from 2.7 in the 1960s to 3.2 by 2023, according to a 2024 report, even as student effort has plummeted from 24 study hours per week in 1961 to 14 in 2022.
This inflation poisons the academic ecosystem. In my 2019 series on grade inflation, I cited Valen Johnson’s work at Texas A&M (Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education, 2003), showing how students chase easy graders, skewing course evaluations and pressuring faculty to award higher marks for tenure and job security.
The result? Honest professors get punished with lower enrollments, while standards erode. A 2024 Teachers College Record study projects that, at the current rate—GPAs rising 0.1–0.15 points per decade—nearly everyone will get A’s by mid-century. That’s not progress; it’s a farce.
The damage spills beyond campus: Grade inflation undermines workforce competitiveness. Today’s data confirms this: a 2024 survey finds 60% of employers doubt graduates’ readiness, blaming inflated credentials. Transcripts, once a reliable signal of ability, are now debased currency—a point driven home by a 2023 report showing 30% of employers no longer trust GPAs. Meanwhile, only 36% of Americans have confidence in higher education, per a 2024 Gallup poll,
Believe it or not, some actually try to defend grade inflation, claiming it reflects better teaching or student quality. These are myths. The trend traces back to Vietnam-era draft-dodging, when D’s and F’s vanished to keep students enrolled and out of the military. That leniency stuck, and now we’re reaping the consequences.
The solution remains clear: transparency through legislation. In 2013, then-Texas state Rep. Scott Turner (now the current U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), authored a bill requiring all Texas public universities to report median grades alongside individual marks on transcripts, thereby exposing inflation and restoring trust—and doing so without imposing a mandatory curve or micromanaging the public universities. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the Texas House but died in the Senate. It has been reintroduced several times since its initial passage in the House. It’s a simple fix: let the public see the truth, and market pressure will force reform.
Grade inflation isn’t a victimless trend—it’s a betrayal of education’s mission. With A’s nearing 47% and GPAs at 3.2-out-of-4.00, the system teeters on collapse.
In addition to being a workforce-competitiveness issue, grade inflation is also a moral issue. Every major world religion as well as philosophic system agree on a fundamental truth: Life is difficult. To deal with life’s inevitable difficulties, we train our minds and characters. This is what education is.
But grade inflation teaches our students exactly the opposite—it teaches them that life is easy. And it is easy—at least in college these days. It’s easy until they enter the working world, where reality punches them in the face, to the shame of us adults who work in universities and who have the duty to prepare students for the challenges ahead of them.
Employers, taxpayers, and students deserve better than a credentialing mill. Reformers have spent years sounding this alarm, and the latest numbers only sharpen their case.
Higher education must return to rigor, and transparency is the first step. If we fail, we risk a future where merit is dead, and all we’re left with is a pile of meaningless, Monopoly-money A’s.
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