I attended Undergrad from 1997 to 2001 and I distinctly remember the first paper I received from a new Associate Professor in my major (History) that was a C-. I argued that it would have been an A-level grade in any other professor's class; this new professor told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was most definitely a C- grade and I needed to do better. I did and it made me a better researcher and eventually writer.
I finished that course with a hard-earned B+ and I felt better about myself and my abilities thereafter. As a D1 athlete, I had clear goals and expectations set for me by those who I was against and whom came before me. This was the first time in my academic career where I felt I had received a challenge and clear guidelines on how to improve; something I felt helped me achieve better outcomes.
Education is not intended to be a breeze; it's intended to be a challenge to help you stretch and grow. Just because you and/or your family is spending tens of thousands a semester does not give anyone the right to skate by with the bare minimum effort applied.
I have high expectations for my children academically. My undergrad and graduate degrees were paid for by others (athletics and my employer) alongside of my own work in both. I want my children to grow up and be successful and they will not be if I smooth the road for them in unfair ways. I explain that, in life, they will face uncertain and likely unfair challenges from external forces and they need to not only stretch and grow in their knowledgebase to challenge these forces, but they should also learn to navigate them with grace--an academic exercise in and of itself.
djoldman · 1d ago
This is quite the piece. One section that stands out is:
> It’s no coincidence that as grades have gone up, civic friendship between people with different views and backgrounds has gone down, both on campuses and in the nation at large. Students are so confident in their beliefs that they verbally assault professors and guest lecturers and physically assault classmates and janitorial staff. A dose of humility is needed, and it can start in the classroom.
I'm not convinced that grade inflation is causing verbal and physical assaults.
cafard · 7h ago
>> civic friendship between people with different views and backgrounds has gone down, both on campuses and in the nation at large.
Views, I don't know. Backgrounds I'd attribute to the cost of college significantly outrunning inflation.
electric_muse · 1d ago
Princeton under Dean Nancy Malkiel attempted exactly this around 2005 or so. Departments were given grading targets and had stern “talkings to” if they didn’t meet those targets.
They thought the other ivies would follow. They did not. Princeton alone deflated student grades, and as a result, students were getting slightly disadvantaged in various subtle ways.
Certain external scholarships expected certain grades, and didn’t provide nuance for grade deflation. Certain employers took time to realize that they needed to consider Princeton grades slightly differently.
More importantly, perhaps, there was less information in grades. Professors would hide behind “grade deflation” if a student asked about a grade. So students just felt robbed and carried a chip on their shoulders.
During my time as student body president 2010-2012, this was the single greatest student concern.
I cannot say that anyone impacted felt like we learned more because of this program. We didn’t strive harder. In fact, it discouraged many.
Princeton attached a special note to student transcripts, which basically said and did nothing. It just added platitudes about rigor.
Over time, this experiment failed. Quietly. There was no grand repeal. But the stern talking tos stopped.
I like to think the team and I had a part in that repeal when we completed the Academic slide Total Assessment. Our report is still online.
That was a failure. And I don’t know there is a redeemable way to try again.
Edit: link fixed
vlark · 1d ago
This article references how grade inflation has boomed since 2013 (when the authors were in school). Here's an article from 2013 bemoaning grade inflation:
Folks, this is an annual grouching point among folks who care about or work in academia. Nothing to see here.
--
Edited to add that I am a community college English professor. Most people pass my class because the college has set the final drop date one month before the end of the semester, so students have plenty of time to avoid a bad final grade.
otterley · 1d ago
Speaking of tough grading, did anyone catch the misspelling of "education" in the article slug?
sigh Is it that time of the year again that we start publishing these? Boy, how time flies...
Too frequently, what people (and clearly the author of this piece) mean when they say "tougher grading" is just a return to forcible bell-curve application and faculty who take out their personal insecurities and annoyance over being required to teach classes on their students. That's not making academics more challenging, it's just torturing statistics and arbitrarily modifying the race-course in order to satisfy other agendas. If you have a good teacher and a good course and more than half the class does well, you should consider making the next iteration more challenging, but you should not feel obliged to fail 10% of them because "there's always a bell-curve", nor should you be using grading as a means to "humble" your students.
I emphasized the word "consider" up there because not every course needs to be a slog up Everest, either — an "intro to X" course might well be a class in which many people do well. Some percentage of them will be people looking to make that their major, so they'll already know enough to be ahead of the curve in an "intro" course. Others will be bright people who learn well and adapt to the material. As someone who teaches classes regularly at the college/grad-school level, I try to make the content interesting and challenging, but if most of my students turn in work that exceeds standards and are coming out with a good understanding of the content, I feel like I've accomplished my goals — academia is supposed to be about learning after all, and they're displaying that they've correctly learned the content I wanted to communicate to them. I do spend time trying to re-work the course regularly (something I'm forced to do much more since the explosion of sites like Chegg...), but past a certain point if something is clearly working, why am I obliged to break it?
In short one anthem for the US ought to be: competence is back. Know how matters.
Like others report uni profs made me better. Wherever my English prof is at ... thanks a ton! Leadership, caring, and know how. You were marvelous.
tupac_speedrap · 1d ago
Parents won't allow tough grading lets be honest, they just like how it sounds on paper. There's far too many kids nowadays with parents who think they can do no wrong terrorising classrooms and sapping attention from students who actually put the effort in but if you actually contact their parents and tell them maybe their kid shouldn't assault other people or put some more effort in to get better grades they enter this weird denial state and lash out and their kid keeps up the bad behaviour.
anthem2025 · 1d ago
So already overburdened teachers can have to deal with flunking half the class and parents getting mad at them for it?
aredox · 1d ago
Absolutely tone deaf article when the whole US Presidency, half of Congress and half of Senate are promoting incompetence and punishing any experience.
What is the goal of "tough grading" when they, and a majority of the population, actively despise any kind of expertise?
tuckerman · 1d ago
I don't disagree about the problems in government but I don't think we need to look through that lens all the time.
Grade inflation and an environment that is unwilling to challenge our children can be a problem even if bad things are going on elsewhere. One could argue that a system that encourages kids to work hard, face challenges, and value deep thought might make the population more resilient against anti-intellectualism.
aredox · 1d ago
>I don't think we need to look through that lens all the time.
You don't think so, but kids aren't stupid and see what's going on.
201984 · 1d ago
Other people being bad isn't an excuse to not do better. Where would we get as a society if every suggestion to improve was met with "well what about those other people who are worse"?
aredox · 11h ago
"Well what about those other people who are worse and that we have promoted to the highest places on our society?"
Where would we get as a society, indeed.
sciencesama · 1d ago
Well if we post the Ten Commandments in our schools, wouldn’t that make us wiser and smarter ?
garciasn · 1d ago
No; plus, it's illegal under state and church separation in the United States.
Also, this isn't 500 BCE; we live in 2025. Humanity no longer needs to learn the basics of common decency, morality, and legality through the mythical threat of a being(s) in the sky helping or hurting an eternal life that simply does not exist after death.
aredox · 11h ago
>it's illegal under state and church separation in the United States.
Try to keep up with reality. It is on display right now, and there is reason to think the Supreme Court will allow it.
I know it is; doesn't mean it's legal. And until the Supreme Court rules on it, we just have to wait.
complianceowl · 1d ago
I feel sorry for people like you who can't read an article such as this one without expressing rage at the current administration. Regardless of my political positions, I've come to learn that there are enough substantive, significant issues where bipartisan unity is a no-brainer, but those in power, with all of their self-interested agendas, profit from the people being at each other's throats.
We may disagree on carbon credits, but we nobody disagrees on having clean water, sustainable sources of energy, regulations on sanitation, waste, and pollution; affordable education; term limits and abolishing lobbyists. The list goes on.
Mellow out and focus on the substance without letting your TDS flare up.
triceratops · 1d ago
> but nobody disagrees on having clean water, sustainable sources of energy, regulations on sanitation, waste, and pollution; affordable education; term limits and abolishing lobbyists
Citation needed.
anthem2025 · 1d ago
Republicans do disagree on all the things you listed. Every single fucking one.
They are actively working to destroy as much environmental regulation as they can and further the interests of fossil fuel corporations.
TechnicolorByte · 1d ago
Embarrassing comment. This current administration and its supporters most definitely does not agree on several of your points, in particular on sustainable sources of energy and regulations on pollution.
--
I attended Undergrad from 1997 to 2001 and I distinctly remember the first paper I received from a new Associate Professor in my major (History) that was a C-. I argued that it would have been an A-level grade in any other professor's class; this new professor told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was most definitely a C- grade and I needed to do better. I did and it made me a better researcher and eventually writer.
I finished that course with a hard-earned B+ and I felt better about myself and my abilities thereafter. As a D1 athlete, I had clear goals and expectations set for me by those who I was against and whom came before me. This was the first time in my academic career where I felt I had received a challenge and clear guidelines on how to improve; something I felt helped me achieve better outcomes.
Education is not intended to be a breeze; it's intended to be a challenge to help you stretch and grow. Just because you and/or your family is spending tens of thousands a semester does not give anyone the right to skate by with the bare minimum effort applied.
I have high expectations for my children academically. My undergrad and graduate degrees were paid for by others (athletics and my employer) alongside of my own work in both. I want my children to grow up and be successful and they will not be if I smooth the road for them in unfair ways. I explain that, in life, they will face uncertain and likely unfair challenges from external forces and they need to not only stretch and grow in their knowledgebase to challenge these forces, but they should also learn to navigate them with grace--an academic exercise in and of itself.
> It’s no coincidence that as grades have gone up, civic friendship between people with different views and backgrounds has gone down, both on campuses and in the nation at large. Students are so confident in their beliefs that they verbally assault professors and guest lecturers and physically assault classmates and janitorial staff. A dose of humility is needed, and it can start in the classroom.
I'm not convinced that grade inflation is causing verbal and physical assaults.
Views, I don't know. Backgrounds I'd attribute to the cost of college significantly outrunning inflation.
They thought the other ivies would follow. They did not. Princeton alone deflated student grades, and as a result, students were getting slightly disadvantaged in various subtle ways.
Certain external scholarships expected certain grades, and didn’t provide nuance for grade deflation. Certain employers took time to realize that they needed to consider Princeton grades slightly differently.
More importantly, perhaps, there was less information in grades. Professors would hide behind “grade deflation” if a student asked about a grade. So students just felt robbed and carried a chip on their shoulders.
During my time as student body president 2010-2012, this was the single greatest student concern.
I cannot say that anyone impacted felt like we learned more because of this program. We didn’t strive harder. In fact, it discouraged many.
Princeton attached a special note to student transcripts, which basically said and did nothing. It just added platitudes about rigor.
Over time, this experiment failed. Quietly. There was no grand repeal. But the stern talking tos stopped.
I like to think the team and I had a part in that repeal when we completed the Academic slide Total Assessment. Our report is still online.
https://projectalta.wordpress.com
That was a failure. And I don’t know there is a redeemable way to try again.
Edit: link fixed
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2...
Here's a whole book about the issue, published in 2003: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b97309
And here's one from 1991: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.5.1.159
Folks, this is an annual grouching point among folks who care about or work in academia. Nothing to see here.
-- Edited to add that I am a community college English professor. Most people pass my class because the college has set the final drop date one month before the end of the semester, so students have plenty of time to avoid a bad final grade.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/america-needs-tough-grading-educ...
Too frequently, what people (and clearly the author of this piece) mean when they say "tougher grading" is just a return to forcible bell-curve application and faculty who take out their personal insecurities and annoyance over being required to teach classes on their students. That's not making academics more challenging, it's just torturing statistics and arbitrarily modifying the race-course in order to satisfy other agendas. If you have a good teacher and a good course and more than half the class does well, you should consider making the next iteration more challenging, but you should not feel obliged to fail 10% of them because "there's always a bell-curve", nor should you be using grading as a means to "humble" your students.
I emphasized the word "consider" up there because not every course needs to be a slog up Everest, either — an "intro to X" course might well be a class in which many people do well. Some percentage of them will be people looking to make that their major, so they'll already know enough to be ahead of the curve in an "intro" course. Others will be bright people who learn well and adapt to the material. As someone who teaches classes regularly at the college/grad-school level, I try to make the content interesting and challenging, but if most of my students turn in work that exceeds standards and are coming out with a good understanding of the content, I feel like I've accomplished my goals — academia is supposed to be about learning after all, and they're displaying that they've correctly learned the content I wanted to communicate to them. I do spend time trying to re-work the course regularly (something I'm forced to do much more since the explosion of sites like Chegg...), but past a certain point if something is clearly working, why am I obliged to break it?
Like others report uni profs made me better. Wherever my English prof is at ... thanks a ton! Leadership, caring, and know how. You were marvelous.
What is the goal of "tough grading" when they, and a majority of the population, actively despise any kind of expertise?
Grade inflation and an environment that is unwilling to challenge our children can be a problem even if bad things are going on elsewhere. One could argue that a system that encourages kids to work hard, face challenges, and value deep thought might make the population more resilient against anti-intellectualism.
You don't think so, but kids aren't stupid and see what's going on.
Where would we get as a society, indeed.
Also, this isn't 500 BCE; we live in 2025. Humanity no longer needs to learn the basics of common decency, morality, and legality through the mythical threat of a being(s) in the sky helping or hurting an eternal life that simply does not exist after death.
Try to keep up with reality. It is on display right now, and there is reason to think the Supreme Court will allow it.
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2025/09/02/ten-commandments-...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/07/the-ten-commandments-retu...
We may disagree on carbon credits, but we nobody disagrees on having clean water, sustainable sources of energy, regulations on sanitation, waste, and pollution; affordable education; term limits and abolishing lobbyists. The list goes on.
Mellow out and focus on the substance without letting your TDS flare up.
Citation needed.
They are actively working to destroy as much environmental regulation as they can and further the interests of fossil fuel corporations.