Thank you for the NYT article link. It is a fact that grade inflation occurs in the humanities at many school. Earlier posters state that Harvard Biz. School only give 5% of the class a C. My brother incurred this problem when applying for grad school in the medical field. He was a physics major, arguably one of the hardest majors on most campuses, and got a proud 3.0 based on a strict bell curve. Top 15% of the class is pretty nice. However, in the bio field, with GPA inflating a C to a B, this made him seem totally average. Many schools just rejected him outright based on this (he thinks)
What to do? A standard has to be set, and as been. But professors can do as they please. Inflating grades has all the wrong incentives, which is why it happens. Schools give high GPA, kids give alumni dollars back with better jobs, repeat. However, now you can't compare the kids as the metric is borked.
What to do? A standard has to be set, and as been. But professors can do as they please. Inflating grades has all the wrong incentives, which is why it happens. Schools give high GPA, kids give alumni dollars back with better jobs, repeat. However, now you can't compare the kids as the metric is borked.
garbage in = garbage out.