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<p>Grade inflation is part of it but not all of it.</p>
<p>I went to high school and college long before grade inflation. Yet I managed to get an A in what is now called precalculus despite issues with understanding some of the material and Bs in two calculus courses despite massive incomprehension. This was in the 1970s. Sometimes, you can scrape by for a while before your problem becomes evident in your grades.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is definitely some grade inflation out there. At my daughter’s university, she and everyone else in her year who qualified for Phi Beta Kappa as juniors (the top 3% of the College of Arts and Sciences) had GPAs above 4.0 (an A+ is 4.3, which is what makes this possible). Thirty-something years before, at the same university, I qualified for Phi Beta Kappa as a junior with a GPA just below 3.9. GPAs above 4.0 were the stuff of legend. I never personally knew anyone who had one.</p>
<p>I also remember that in junior high, they gave awards to those students who had managed to make the high honor roll (which required either 5 As or 4 As and 1 B) all three years. Only two people in a class of 300 qualified. That is unthinkable now.</p>