Grade Inflation Is Not the Same as Price Inflation: Get Rid of the Cap

When you look at prices from back in the day - as in the menu above from the 1950s - everything looks incredibly cheap. Hamburgers are 50 cents, soup is 15 cents, etc. Of course, in the mid-1950s, average hourly wages for manufacturing production workers were about $1.80, and in those days, manufacturing workers were comparatively well paid.

Given inflation since then, you wouldn't be able to get a bowl of soup at a restaurant for anywhere near 15 cents. But note that the menu above - despite its strange appearance today - has relative prices, i.e., a hamburger costs more than soup, but less than the $1.25 shrimp salad.

Yours truly happened to come upon a recent article in the Daily Princetonian concerning a computer glitch at Princeton that for a short time accidentally made public a list of students who earned A+ in courses and those who failed. Normally, these are (private) reports that are required by the campus authorities:

"When an undergraduate student earns an A-plus or failing grade, the course instructor must submit a report with a written justification for the grade to be reviewed by [the Office of the Deans of the College]. Each report includes the student’s ID, course, term, and instructor."*

It's easy to understand why the authorities would want to be alerted to failures. But apparently there is concern about too many A+ grades. The problem is that holding the line at A+ is a Last Stand. (And we all know what happened to Custer!) There is no grade above A+.

With price inflation, in contrast, there is always a possible higher nominal price. A hamburger could be 50 cents or, over time, $5.00, or ... (Google tells me a Big Mac will nowadays cost you well over $5.00 and maybe over $6.00, depending on where you bought it.) There is no cap on prices, no equivalent to A+. 

If the Princeton deans succeed at holding the line and in making an A+ hard to get, grade inflation means eventually everyone gets an A. If they don't succeed, eventually everyone gets an A+. There is no meaning of grading in either of those cases because there are no relative grades. No one officially has accomplished more or less than anyone else. Unlike price inflation, there is no more and no less. (Google tells me you can nowadays get a small order of French fries at McDonald's for around $2, i.e., fries cost less than a Big Mac so there is a more and a less in pricing.)

A Modest Proposal

The current grading system is capped at A (or A+) since there are no letters in the alphabet before A. Numerical grades, like prices, would be unlimited but could still preserve relativity. You can't runout of numbers. But starting from F and running backwards - omitting E - we have run out of letters. 

Note that we already convert letter grades into numbers (A = 4, B = 3, etc.) when we compute grade point averages. So why not abandon the letters entirely and just keep the numbers? As grade inflation proceeds, students could get a grade of 5 or a 6 or a 7. But a 7 student would presumably have accomplished more than a 6 student. Eventually, as grade inflation continued, the 7 student would become an 8 and the 6 would become a 7. Later, the 7 would become an 8 and the 8 would become a 9, etc.

Get rid of the cap!

Note that numerical grading would also allow comparisons over time. Knowing the average grade in 2026 would allow conversion of 2026 grades to 2036 levels, when we get to 2036 and need to look back at someone's transcript. Essentially, you would have a grade index to make the adjustment just as we have, say, the Consumer Price Index to adjust past prices to contemporary levels. 

Some say grade inflation is inevitable for various reasons including use of student ratings of instructors. But no one has a good remedy. We just lament the phenomenon. Until there is a remedy, why not get rid of the cap?

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*https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025/12/princeton-news-adpol-a-plus-failing-grades-academic-early-alerts-exposed-odoc-website.