Quoted

“At many elite schools and for some other schools, grades have gone up because of better students, but that influence is not as significant as the fact that professors are simply grading more leniently than they ever have. … The idea that students who go to places like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton today are all vastly superior to those of years ago is without basis.”

—former Duke geophysics professor Stuart Rojstaczer on the New York Times Economix blog, May 13. Rojstaczer’s comforting words for Yalies of a certain age stem from his research on university grading trends and grade inflation.