Grade inflation is real at some of these places though. My nephew said it was hard to get an "A" at Yale, but it was much *harder* to get a "C".
"Hard" can mean
(1) Few people do it.
(2) Doing it takes a lot of effort.
By the first standard, it is not difficult for Yale students to get an A at Yale, where the average grade is estimated to be an A-. And why should we need to rely on an outsider's estimate? Why doesn't Yale publish this data? Academics are supposed to disseminate knowledge, but they are not forthcoming about what their institutions do.
Faculty scrutinize grading trends BY JANE DARBY MENTON
Yale Daily News
October 11, 2012
Stuart Rojstaczer, a former professor at Duke University who has researched grade inflation, said GPAs at colleges nationwide have been on the rise since the 1980s. Based on Yale’s honors cutoff levels and historical grade breakdowns, Rojstaczer estimated that the average GPA in the University is probably around an A-, a one-point increase from the B- average he estimates Yale had 50 years ago. Though Rojstaczer attributes this estimated increase to a number of factors, including heightened student expectations and a “modest” growth in the caliber of students, he said grade inflation is key to understanding the trend.
