[asimpleusecase]

The issue that many schools face is that companies complain the grads - even with PhDs - are not able to do anything useful in the workplace. When my wife did her PhD more than 10 years ago (in the UK) she was required to take a stack of ungraded workshops under the label “professionalizing the PhD” it was totally annoying waste of time for her. The stuff was “basics of Excel”, “Research poster making”, “ intro to Adobe suite”, etc this was done because the university had received feedback that PhD grads could literally do nothing useful when hired.

From the article. “About 60% of the grades handed out in classes for the university’s undergraduate program are A’s, up from 40% a decade ago and less than a quarter 20 years ago, according to a report released Monday by Harvard’s Office of Undergraduate Education”

Harvard is currently under a lot of pressure from donors , courts ( loss of case on admissions), and political pressure from US administration.

Awarding 60% A’s does not help them make the case that they know what they are doing and should just be allowed to carry on.