It's Harvard. They go way out of their way to ensure that they only select students who will succeed at their school.
Perhaps it's not grade inflation that's the issue. Perhaps it's time to set aside the outdated ideology that grades must always adhere to a bell curve where some percentage of the class must be failed and some percentage must be passed even if the class is comprised of 35 perfect clones of Albert Einstein.
Even further, what an asinine system to begin with. What good does a grading system based on the success of one's immediate peers do anyone? What information does that offer anyone? Maybe I got a 4.0 from Harvard but, if we using a bell curve system of grading, that may tell you that I was in a particularly weak class or that I actually was the strongest student in Harvard history. You'll never know.
Dunno how Harvard works but where I work in the UK, in the unlikely event we had a cohort full of Einsteins they would all get firsts (hoping we're smart enough to recognise genius when we see it lol). We have an absolute sense of what each level of attainment should look like, and don't grade to a bell curve.
Right, but it makes no sense that Harvard's grade distribution is so different than schools with similarly strong student bodies like Princeton, Columbia, UChicago, Berkeley, etc.
Also keep in mind that a very, very large portion of students are legacy / recruited athletes / very wealthy donor parents.
You don’t have to fail with a curve. You can set it so only outliers fail or get an A. That means most people will be getting a B, but it is still more useful.
More useful for what? The goal isn't necessarily to identify the strongest student. The goal is to teach them material. The grade should represent mastery of the material. Some material can be mastered by every student.
Perhaps it's not grade inflation that's the issue. Perhaps it's time to set aside the outdated ideology that grades must always adhere to a bell curve where some percentage of the class must be failed and some percentage must be passed even if the class is comprised of 35 perfect clones of Albert Einstein.
Even further, what an asinine system to begin with. What good does a grading system based on the success of one's immediate peers do anyone? What information does that offer anyone? Maybe I got a 4.0 from Harvard but, if we using a bell curve system of grading, that may tell you that I was in a particularly weak class or that I actually was the strongest student in Harvard history. You'll never know.