Notwithstanding the word choice, we’re talking about different kinds of coddling, @bclintonk, and I’m guessing you know this. It’s no secret that there’s plenty of grade inflation at Harvard, but that doesn’t alter my point, which is that there’s a certain level of institutional indifference at Harvard to undergrads that’s more pronounced than elsewhere (in part, I think, because of the relative size and importance of the graduate and professional schools).
If a wealthy but relatively disengaged parent gave their kid a large allowance but wasn’t as present for them as arguably they should have been, you might say that the kid was being coddled, but it would also be true that the parent wasn’t giving the kid some of the things they really needed, which other parents were providing to their kids, and was maybe sending them the wrong signal about what was important. That’s roughly how I feel about the Harvard administration and undergrads; the grade inflation is analogous to the excessive allowance, and there’s less of the right kind of love and attention than there should be.
Plenty of other places have grade inflation, by the way - I think it’s symptomatic of a larger problem in which students and their parents are treated like customers (possibly to justify the $70k/yr cost of attendance at a place like Harvard - although Princeton seems to be an honorable exception). In many ways, Harvard and its peer schools infantilize their students, in my opinion. But that’s a subject for another thread.