Grade inflation has been a persistent trend in higher education. The median college GPA increased from 2.9 to 3.28, a 13% from 1990–2020 in the United States, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. A landmark 2012 study published in the Teachers College Record surveyed 200 universities and found that the percentage of A’s increased 28% from 1960-2009. The study also looked at the correlation between grade inflation and selectivity: “Our simple regression model indicates that the average percentage of A plus B grades at a school correlates significantly with the median SAT score of its student body, with private schools, on average, awarding more high grades than public schools.” A Harvard University report on grade inflation found that 60% of grades awarded were A’s.
Harvard University has recently published grade inflation data, but many peer institutions have not. Tufts University, for instance, does not publicly post its grading data. The authors of the 2012 study noted that they had difficulty retrieving information from private schools: “These differences between our data set and national enrollment patterns partly reflect the reticence of private schools to divulge grading data.”
In a written statement to The Tufts Tribune, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Bárbara Brizuela and Dean of the School of Engineering Kyongbum Lee asserted that “The university tracks GPAs. It does not post the information and has no plans to do so.” But despite not releasing specific data, they acknowledged grade inflation at Tufts. The deans noted that grades increased at Tufts during the pandemic, from 2020 to 2021, but that “The overall trend of rising GPAs existed prior to COVID-19 and has continued afterward.” Furthermore, the statement cited a faculty subcommittee that is in the process of examining grades at Tufts.
Summa cum laude is the highest academic honor the university offers: it requires a GPA of 3.8 or higher. In recent years, though, rising numbers of students have achieved this exalted honor. Professor Alisha Rankin, chair of the history department at Tufts, stated that the number of summa cum laude distinctions awarded to the graduating class at Tufts has risen significantly. “What does summa mean if it’s really more standard than exceptional? It used to be the top 15 percent,” lamented Professor Rankin.
Professor Rankin also cited COVID-19 as a major contributor to the current bump in grades. “During the pandemic years, I think a lot of us were really forgiving with students. I know my grades definitely rose just during those years because everyone was dealing with such an unprecedented obstacle to learning.” Another confounding factor she cited was that the administration has not provided a standard grading system or rubric. Instead, she explained, “a lot of professors have their own rubric.” Professor Rankin was somewhat optimistic about her own department, but conscious of its limits, stating that “a lot of professors try to reserve that A for truly superior, excellent, work. But that’s not always true.” Even within the department, “What an A student, A paper, or A exam means is really different. There’s a big variation among professors and faculty.” Professor Rankin continued, explaining that “faculty have long had their own leeway, that’s part of being a faculty member.”
For students applying to graduate school, especially large programs like medical and law school, Professor Rankin noted that any change to correct grade inflation would have to be systemized across many universities: “Almost everyone would have to change things together.” Suddenly lowering grades “would be tricky,” she mentioned, but qualified that this concern might not be “something that’s on professors’ minds necessarily.” One problem she mentioned with this inconsistent lowering is that the onus would fall on graduate schools to keep track of each undergraduate program’s relative grade value. Additionally, no school would intentionally put its students at a disadvantage in post-graduate opportunities by lowering students’ grades across the board, given the propensity of graduate schools to select applicants “very quantitatively.” Professors are concerned about grade inflation, but the answers are still murky, Professor Rankin concluded.
Associate Professor and Department Chair of English Sonia Hofkosh corroborated this account of grade inflation. “I am seeing more A+’s on people’s transcripts,” she said, mentioning this in tandem with a similar rise in summa cum laude awards. She noted that “what I’ve never ever seen before, which I’ve seen very recently, is people triple majoring.” Professor Hofkosh attributed a rise in grades at Tufts and across the nation partly to increased pressure on both students and faculty. Students’ concerns about grades are “part of a larger social issue of the pressure that young people are under, especially given how expensive private institutions of higher learning are.” Tufts was the sixth-most expensive university in the United States in 2025. “I’m not surprised that they and their families feel that there’s pressure on them to succeed and that the mark of success is at least partly in the grading system,” said Professor Hofkosh.
The Teaching@Tufts website is a resource for faculty members developed by the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT), a division of the Office of the Provost. A Teaching@Tufts post from November 1st, 2022, claims that “using grades to sort and rank students relies on a belief in a meritocracy, i.e., that a student’s grade is based on only or primarily on their work ethic and/or their intrinsic intelligence. This fails to account for the systemic structures in higher education that prevent students from having equal opportunity to success (i.e., racism, sexism, ableism, microaggressions, implicit biases, inequitable access to opportunities and resources).” The original post was attributed to Senior Associate Director of CELT Carie Cardamone, but the current posted version omits this detail. The blog post dismisses concerns about rising grade inflation, stating that the concerns “prioritize the ranking function of grades, and ultimately they privilege certain students who have mostly been successful in this system because it was built for them.” Cardamone then prescribes several recommendations when grading such as considering “language complexity, vocabulary, cultural context,” rather than “worrying about the distribution of grades that you assign.”
The blog post brings up the question of whether grades are the best way to give students feedback. Professor Hofkosh noted that “We are in a setting where we have to give grades. If we were in one where we didn’t have to give grades, but could just give feedback to students about what they thought was successful about what they did… [or] ways they saw they could improve…it would be a lot of work for faculty members, especially ones who teach big classes.” Professor Hofkosh noted that when determining final grades, she takes “a lot of things into account. I don’t just average the grades on [essay] papers.” This includes discussions which “try to engage as many student voices as possible.” When asked about whether grades should exist, Tufts freshman Ellis Thompson said they should: “It’s a good measure of competence and ability.”
Many commentators have pushed back against the rising grade inflation in higher education. Public officials and commentators have questioned whether these rising grades are indicative of smarter students, or rather a decadent system in elite academic institutions which is failing to reward merit. In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Daniel Pink argued that as tuition for universities climbs and “colleges compete ferociously for parent dollars and student enrollment, high grades have become like swank dorms, gleaming gyms and gourmet dining halls: another amenity to keep customers happy.” Allysia Finely of The Wall Street Journal contended in an opinion article that “Colleges are graduating a surfeit of young people who lack hard or even soft skills.” Finely blames government subsidization of higher education and rising tuition for recent grade inflation, similar to how credit raters paid by banks gave AAA ratings to toxic mortgage-backed securities in the years before the 2008 financial crisis. “Similarly, employers are figuring out high GPAs aren’t a reliable indicator of merit,” Finely stated. The Trump administration has addressed this inflation as a major concern in its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a proposed set of requirements offered to nine universities that offers conditional federal grants and funding. Signatories must “acknowledge that a grade must not be inflated, or deflated, for any non-academic reason, but only rigorously reflect the demonstrated mastery of a subject that the grade purports to represent.”
Paula Landeros, a junior at Tufts studying community health, said she had not noticed grade inflation in her department, but if it did occur, “it could be a problem because grades do have to mean something, but I think it should be more about equity, like evaluating the effort that you put in.”
Tufts today is one of the battlegrounds on which an American struggle for defining educational practices is being fought. Between students and faculty, ideals for what constitutes academic distinction vary widely, ranging from a desire to walk back recent grade inflation to calls for a complete reimagination of the evaluation system. In their obligation to best serve their students, institutions of higher education aim to position them for success, yet now find themselves rubber-stamping a generation of college graduates. It’s a catch-22. Universities recognize that meaningful grade reform—which won’t place their own students at a disadvantage—may depend not only on their own efforts but the coordinated action across the higher education system.
Photo by Mia Snyder