I teach at an Ivy League university. I can’t count how many colleagues have told me that they “just give everyone an A.”

This mindset doesn’t belong to just one instructor, department, discipline, or generation. I do not “out” any one or two particular people when I describe my experience with grade inflation. It’s happening everywhere, and some instructors even boast of the practice.

At best, grade inflation robs students of their education. At worst, it has outsized, negative consequences for students once they graduate, most especially for those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Graduates with money and well-connected families can cope with the burden of a mediocre reputation. Graduates whose futures depend entirely on their merit and perceived potential? We’ve set them back with the very degree we promised would put them ahead in life.

We know what happens when the public believes some applicants are less capable than others. Affirmative action, irrespective of one’s opinion about its efficacy or necessity, never escaped the popular opinion that it “mismatched” underqualified applicants to selective colleges. Some black and Latino students have wondered whether they were admitted based on their merit or merely because of their skin color. The insecurity generated by perpetuating a system of reduced merit not only belittles the students in question but also leads to an expectation from professors—and prospective employers—that these students cannot perform up to standard. Likewise, grade inflation is a practice that would seem to advance equity or even “decolonize” the classroom, yet the ultimate effect is undermining student achievement. Recent graduates’ reputations for competence are tarnished when their academic proficiency is questioned.

This pessimism is not unwarranted.

A recent survey shows that nearly 40 percent of respondent employers avoid hiring recent college graduates, whom they suspect are unprepared for professional life. American companies are increasingly hiring based on applicant skills and dropping minimum degree requirements. Frustrated young workers are going viral on TikTok, realizing in real time that the implicit promise of high-paying employment upon graduation doesn’t align with their frustrating reality. Since 2020, hiring rates for any applicant with a bachelor’s degree or higher have dipped, whereas those without a bachelor’s are finding jobs at a higher rate than their more educated counterparts. Perhaps the most counterintuitive hiring trend of all is the advice for applicants to leave their GPAs off of their resumes. A number of employers are questioning the validity of associating high GPAs with professional competency.

In sum, college degrees have become increasingly less attractive to employers, and even graduates with high GPAs—whom we might expect to defy this negative hiring trend—are advised to downplay their grades in order to become more hirable. Grade inflation, in general, hinders students from becoming competitive professional applicants or at least coming across as such.

Some graduates can overcome the challenges brought on by grade inflation. These graduates, however, are not the ones we typically think of as needing any extra help. Those with advantageous social networks remain competitive in the job market by virtue of their connections, which are often inherited. Those with fewer connections and likely a lower socioeconomic status can, in theory, still take advantage of their academic achievements and subsequently build their own professional networks. Yet due to the open secret that today’s graduates are under-prepared despite—and perhaps because of—their high grades, students who depend on their own merit are at a loss. If the value of academic achievement is known to be inflated across academia, then our least privileged students won’t be able to fall back even on their own accomplishments.

We need realistic solutions to grade inflation, which will benefit the students most harmed by this practice. Speaking from experience, berating individual instructors will not work en masse. If presented with the option to give an A or risk their jobs, instructors with employment precarity who do the majority of teaching at American colleges and universities will likely choose the former. Departments, especially faculty with tenure, must determine by what standards student work will be evaluated. Deans and department heads must provide their teaching faculty with administrative support in case of blowback over grading, and the line must be held. Course evaluations by students should not be interpreted as reliable markers of instructors’ competencies, given the noted correlation between positive course evaluations and students’ satisfaction with their anticipated grades. Undoing the damage of grade inflation can only happen if administrators and department heads collectively hold the line on fair grading based on honest assessments of students’ work.

We cannot afford to repeat the affirmative action debacle, which had a dubious effect on advancing equality and earned the American university system even more disapproval from the public. Grade inflation not only compromises student learning and tarnishes graduates’ reputation for competence but also sabotages the academic enterprise as a whole. Academia’s reputation hangs in the balance, and the grading choices made by instructors will either restore its integrity or further erode it. Our students’ futures, especially those disadvantaged and relying more on their merit to advance socioeconomically, are at stake. Administrators and tenured faculty must address the grade inflation problem to restore our reputation. If we can make grading meaningful and fair, we can show our students, prospective employers, and the American public that a college education still has value.

Image of Grade List by Eugene Sim — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 85939075 & Red Oval Element by TWINS DESIGN STUDIO — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 493412523