00:00I'm Noah Feldman. I'm a professor at Harvard. Grade inflation is real and it's a good thing
00:03that Harvard's doing something about that by capping the number of days in undergraduate
00:07classes. But it's really important to keep in mind that grades actually have a very limited
00:11yet important function in real life. They rank students on their ability to perform a very
00:16specific set of academic tests. In other words, grades are one domain where students can compete
00:21and you've got to keep in mind that if you've been admitted to a selective university,
00:24you are competitive and you'll do whatever it takes to get ahead. If everyone's getting a
00:29grade somewhere between an A and an A-, then there's no incentive to compete over grades.
00:34That will drive people to compete for something else that will get them jobs, like extracurriculars.
00:38So for example, if they want to be in banking or consulting, they have to join clubs that have
00:42the sole purpose of indicating to the people who want to hire them that they're willing to kick
00:46their own butts in order to get into those jobs. Competing on extracurriculars is fine. I mean,
00:51what are sports if not extracurriculars? And we compete in those very intensely. If you want to
00:55be on Broadway, you want to be competing for the best shows on campus, unless you're good
00:59enough to already be going out for professional auditions. So the real problem with grade inflation
01:02is that students who want to go to law school or medical school or who want to become academics
01:06and are entering professions where your grades actually do mean something have no other way
01:10to differentiate themselves because class is the historical way to do that. Add that to the fact
01:15that universities advertise themselves as places of education, not only places of extracurriculars.
01:20So if the university says academics aren't all that important, why are our students enrolling
01:25in the first place? The upshot is the way universities need is a Goldilocks grading policy,
01:29not so soft that no one competes and not so tough that everyone gets a terrible grade.
01:34So all students should take their classes at least a little bit seriously. And the students who really
01:38want to excel academically should have a venue where they can do that, which they don't in a world of
01:42grade inflation. A B today should simply indicate that a student had other priorities, or maybe that
01:46it was just a really hard class and someone had to get a B. That's just fine. And if we
01:51continue to fight
01:51grade inflation, everyone will accept that it is.
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