You have to be smart (or nepo-ed) to get into Harvard.
54,008 students applied for this year’s Freshman class and just 1,937 (or 3.58%) were admitted. But once you’re in, you’re in. This year, 66% of Harvard grades are A’s, up from 25% twenty years ago.
Such careening grade inflation has caused Harvard’s faculty to vote this week on a proposal to limit the number of “A”s to 20% of students taking the course. Needless to say, the students think this is a terrible idea.
But Harvard is not alone. By 2021–22, over half of McGill undergrad courses had average grades of A or A‑, and percentages only slightly less exist at Queen’s, Western and the University of Toronto.
Indeed, if allowed to spread unchecked, 100% of students will get A’s, thereby violating one of the laws of human behaviour: we will always work to create differences among us, especially when none exist.
The same holds for high school grades. Back then, only the rarest of birds got a 90% or above average. Today 90% will get you into U of T, but you’ll need at least an 85% average to be considered. It’s not that IQs have risen sharply in the nearly 60 years since I graduated from high school. It’s grade inflation.
Now grade inflation, like price inflation, is a bad thing. Gas in Toronto last year cost $1.63 to $1.79 a litre. Today it’s $1.79 to $1.89. Steak in 2020 cost $22.51/kg compared to today’s $35/kg.
But what if we could link grade inflation and price inflation and use both to reduce the bad effects of the other?
Under my model, high school marks would also be indexed to inflation: when too many 17‑year‑olds have averages that would have put them in the Order of Canada a generation ago, a province’s transfer payments to school boards will automatically shrink. Suddenly, every principal will have the same conversation: “We can give everyone 95s, or we can keep the lights on.”
Doug Ford, are you listening? Because, over time, governments will pay less for the downstream consequences of inflated credentials. They won’t have to fund as many fifth‑year degrees, “transition programs,” and internship mills built to re‑introduce failure to young people who thought a B+ was a hate crime.
Those savings can be channelled into grants for institutions that keep their “A”‑rates under control. In return, those universities will commit to lowering tuition for students who are currently paying champagne prices for tap‑water distinctions.
Think of it as a central bank for grades. When the “A”‑money supply gets too loose, the “Grade Bank of Canada” raises the Academic Rigor Rate. When the supply tightens and students are genuinely struggling, it loosens again.
Soon, Harvard will be begging to get back to a mere 35% A’s, not just because it creates higher standards, but because that’s how it qualifies for the federal “Too Smart To Fail” bailout. Until then, we’ll go on pretending that 84% of Harvard work is in the A range, Ontario teenagers are all budding Einsteins, and employers can somehow tell them apart with psychometric tests and unpaid internships. Or we could do something truly radical: let a C be a C again — and make it cheaper.
What’s the true sad cost of grade inflation? Remember the Varsity Blues scandal in 2019? 53 people were charged in a USD $25 million bribery scheme to secure places for their kids at top U.S. universities like Stanford and Yale. This simply confirmed that for some parents, giving your child a leg up via a top university is worth the risk of jail and loss of your reputation.
But last week, 14 people were jailed for paying bribes to get their kids into a Hong Kong kindergarten.
A kindergarten. Do you remember your best friend from kindergarten? You do not. Have they opened big career doors for you? They have not.
Now, how about your best college friend? Different league entirely.
If grade inflation keeps growing, families will go to jail for bribing their way into daycare.
In fact, back in 2008 in Winnipeg, they already did.
Meanwhile…
1. Camino de Biblioteca. This year, 800,000 people will walk its 800 kilometres on apersonal pilgrimage.
This month, Toronto writer Marci Stepak will walk to all 100 branches of the Toronto Public Library to honour her late mother and raise funds for the TPL.
While you can also hike the 89 km. from Toronto to the Martyr’s Shrine at Ste. Marie-Among-the-Hurons, why not create your own urban pilgrimage linking a chain of 25 to 30 library branches ending at the Toronto Reference Library as a kind of cathedral of books? Each day of this long-weekend pilgrimage could focus on a theme – childhood reading, learning through hardship, community and justice – where you can pause and read a short text at each branch and maybe even stamp your “readers’ passport” like the Spanish pilgrim passport.
2. Odd bedfellows. First, marriage and dementia. Then mistakes that improve the song.Then Donald Trump and writing. Finally, Gwyneth’s plastic surgeon…and Queen Elizabeth’s closets.
3. Better versions of…apps we use now: for weather, for flights, for calories…
Plus better clam chowder donuts…American Presidents...aging clocks, the ones that calculate how old your body is…and people and scary flags.
4. Rethinking crime and the police. My March 6 blog argued that violent crime isdown, so let’s all take a breath and not give in to the fearmongers. I’d like to modify my enthusiasm for a crime-freer Canada via two new stories that argue the contrary. First, from the Globe and Mail, how Rosedale homeowners have hired private security firms to protect themselves and their property. Second, why the Toronto Police Service budget just keeps going up and up.
5. Far-off. Way out. First, the Alphorn, which you will never play. Next, the busiest place you’ve never seen. Next, the best seat in all of Paris. Plus the matchbook covers as flash points igniting new worlds. And chokepoints as the true crossroads of history; how Japan is cracking down on wayward cyclists; and finally, where spreading rumours is a crime.
6. Big thinkers; strong views. How Stephen Lewis “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Plus, Larry Fink is the Chair of Blackrock which manages $US 14 trillion in assets. Here’s his letter to investors. Plus historian Tim Snyder on 5 scenarios for a coup before the U.S. midterms. Plus day and life.
7. Big thinkers; bigger trip. There’s still room to join us at The Canada Summit, the four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians will discuss where we’re headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and AI, and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here.
Speaking of really big thinkers, there are just a few tickets left for the RamsayTalk with New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe on June 15. The early praise for London Falling is delirious. Tickets here.
8. The week in Tech. Maclean’s has an investigative piece on a Markham pharmacist who became the secret king of fraudulent internet porn. Plus why blaming anyone forcreating AI slop is pointless. And on Apple’s 50th anniversary, the mystery of Steve Jobs. And how Russia spies on Ukraine from outer space. And speaking of outer space, here’s the many dimensions of Artemis II. Plus, what exactly is Space X?
9. The play’s still the thing. June is the 100th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth. So it’s very apropos that Crow’s Theatre is world-premiering American Devotion, Franca Miraglia’s fictional account in a Connecticut farmhouse in 1957 when Norman Mailer has wangled a coveted invitation for cocktails with the reclusive couple. Runs June 3 to 21. Tickets here.
10. Same old coffee. Fresh new grounds. A U.S. federal judge this week ordered the White House to cease construction on the President’s brobdingnagian ballroom. The White House, of course, appealed, not for design reasons or anything soft like that. But because not letting construction go ahead means ”threatening grave national security harms to the White House, the President and his family, and White House staff.” Here’s the official text of their objections.
11. What I’m reading. Stumbling across a compelling new author with lots of books is infinitely better than stumbling across just a new author. Suddenly, like clicking on the first minute of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, you know that rarest of thrills that only such anticipatory addiction can satisfy: the certainty that you will have days, weeks, even months you can spend, often alone, with your new drug. Such is my keenness that you try the British-Belgium spy novelist, Kevin Wignall. I’ve read To Die in Vienna and A Death in Sweden. They’re espionage-noir, very smart, tidy, quick and oddly funny. One step up from airport reading, one down from le Carré.