Colleges and Universities

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🎓 Harvard's grade reckoning

Data: Harvard. Chart: Noah Bressner/Axios Harvard's faculty begins voting today on limiting the number of A's professors can award, Axios Boston's Mike Deehan writes. Why it matters: The steady rise of A's and B's at elite universities since the early 2000s has eroded GPAs as a screening tool for employers and graduate schools. 📈 Stunning stat: In 2010, A's accounted for one-third of all marks, according to an internal Harvard report. By 2025, that number doubled to over 60%. More on Harvard's proposal ...

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🤖 ChatGPT powers grade inflation

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

AI is exacerbating the trend of colleges handing out too many A's, Axios' Josephine Walker reports. Why it matters: Universities and colleges were already concerned about grade inflation. But now they must worry that graduates are leaving AI-proficient rather than knowledgeable about their subjects of study. ✔️ The big picture: It isn't a case where A- students get bumped to an A, says Igor Chirikov, a UC Berkeley professor who authored a study on AI and grade inflation. "We have a C student who is now an A student," Chirikov tells Axios, citing his analysis of grades given between 2018 and 2025 at an unnamed Texas research university. 📈 What they found: Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, "excellent" grades rose by 30% in classes where AI is useful, such as English composition and coding. In classes where it's not — like sculpture and lab-based courses — grades remained flat. Classes where homework was heavily weighted saw a higher rate of grade inflation, suggesting students got an AI-assisted boost. 📓 What to watch: Professors are getting crafty with steps like requiring handwritten or oral exams.

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📚 Six-figure tuitions

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

There's a growing six-figure club of colleges charging $100,000 or more for a single year of tuition. At least 16 schools, including Duke, Georgetown, UChicago, NYU, USC and Amherst, have crossed that benchmark, New York Magazine reports ($). What to watch: 85 colleges were already charging more than $90,000 last year so look for more entrants into the six-figure club in the next few years.