Really smart students probably deserve really high grades. Moreover, tough graders could alienate their students. Plus, tough grading makes a student less likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in college rankings.
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The report sifts through several possible causes for the inflated grades. Among them:
A holdover practice from the 1960s, when professors knew that F's triggered a draft notice and a trip to Vietnam.
An influx of more students, including some minorities, who are less prepared for college work. Grading leniency is believed to encourage their continued academic participation and promote self-esteem.
Evaluation systems in which students grade professors, thereby providing an incentive for teachers to go easy on their future evaluators.
An explosion in the number of overburdened adjunct professors who lack the time to evaluate each student more accurately.
The authors of the report cast doubt on several of those explanations, including the influx of minorities. They barely touch on an obvious explanation offered by several professors: Families paying more than $30,000 a year for a college education expect something more for their money than a report card full of gentleman's Cs.
More important than the reasons for inflated grades is the impact they have.
When all students receive high marks, graduate schools and business recruiters simply start ignoring the grades. That leads the graduate schools to rely more on entrance tests. It prompts corporate recruiters to depend on a "good old boy/girl" network in an effort to unearth the difference between who looks good on paper and who is actually good.
Put to disadvantage in that system are students who traditionally don't test as well or lack connections. In many cases, those are the poor and minority students who are the first in their families to graduate from college. No matter how hard they work, their A's look ordinary.
