Grade point averages at Ivy League colleges have crept up over the past 50 years, according to this chart from the Economist:
Dan Kitwood
Libby Nelson was Vox’s editorial director, politics and policy, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.
The data comes from a variety of sources, including college newspapers and internal documents. But it’s clear that over time, the trend has been on the rise — although Princeton isn’t far from where it was in the mid-1980s, and Harvard appears to have settled at around a B-plus. Brown is leading the pack; the average GPA there is now almost an A-minus.
Colleges can stop grade inflation, as Wellesley College learned. But disarming unilaterally brings its own consequences.
