In the past few years, the United States has witnessed a growing trend across college campuses: grade inflation. Washington and Lee is no exception. 

This past year, Harvard University established a policy to limit the amount of As handed out to students. The policy allows professors to give out As to approximately 20% of students in each class. The decision faced immense backlash. 

After the COVID-19 pandemic, conversations about mental health opened up, especially ones about student academic pressure. In an uncertain economic time with an unpredictable job market, the pressure to stand out is growing. The rampant trend of grade inflation reflects a problem: an A now represents average. As colleges struggle to reverse that trend, students are becoming distressed. One freshman at Harvard said, regarding the new grade policy, that the “cap would create so much pressure on students that life wouldn’t be worth that much to live.” 

Nationwide, schools are admitting more competitive candidates each year as the number of applications increases, but grade inflation remains a legitimate concern. From 1990-2020, according to the U.S. Department of Education, GPAs rose more than 16% across college campuses. A prominent factor in the issue is that professors feel pressured to give out the grades that students want in order to stay employed at universities. Sites like “Rate My Professors,” where students can find out if a professor has a reputation for being “difficult” or “easy,” cause students to opt out of more challenging classes. 

The problem is that in the current market, no one stands out. No student feels that they can afford anything less than an A because of the potential consequences for their post-grad opportunities, whether in graduate school or entering the job market. This also makes grades unfair for the students who willingly take difficult classes where an A truly is rare. The standardization of GPAs for employment makes distinguishing true achievement difficult. 

The consequences of grade inflation, however, are not limited to college campuses. The same tension between achievement, pressure and the meaning of an A begins much earlier, often shaping students’ expectations long before they arrive at college.

In my high school, there was one teacher who everyone regarded as amazing, but also the most difficult. He was the hardest teacher I have ever had, yet he was my best teacher. Because of his instruction, I obtained a 5 on the AP test and ended his class with an A-. The A- was tough to obtain, as only 13 of his 100 students received any kind of A. 

During my senior year, I took AP Literature with a different teacher and obtained an A, but I did not learn nearly as much. The lack of challenge arguably led me to receive a 4 on the AP exam. This reflects the larger issue of grade inflation. The problem in the current climate of competition is distinguishing a true A from an A of completion or effort. With so much conversation on mental health, professors feel afraid of how students may react to not receiving a grade they may feel entitled to. 

More critically, while Washington and Lee University has an Honor System, many other universities do not. As artificial intelligence gets smarter, the need to turn around grade inflation is more crucial than ever due to the accessibility of technological resources. While I do not know the solution to solving such a problem, universities across the nation need to communicate on addressing the issue collectively. Colleges, including Washington and Lee, should emphasize the process of learning, not the grade.