Grade Inflation? At SCU?
(Jenell Theobald/The Santa Clara)
Grade inflation at colleges and universities has been in the news. Earlier this year, grade inflation stories focused on Harvard University. Last month, Yale University admitted the extent of its grade inflation.
Recently, Harvard has made headlines for trying to deal with its university-wide grading practices. Harvard just approved a proposal to cap undergraduate A grades at roughly 20% and introduce an internal ranking system.
At Harvard in 2024, 60.2% of all undergraduate grades awarded were in the A range. At Yale, over two generations the percentage of A or A- grades had grown from 10% to 79%.
College grade inflation now affects college-bound high school students, too. Advanced Placement test scores have increased significantly in the last few years. The College Board, which administers the tests, says it merely was “recalibrating” the test scores to match the reality of the grading in the college courses.
What about SCU? Is there grade inflation here? Over a few years, grade inflation may be hard to see. But take a step back. Go back to the 1980s when the parents of some current students attended the university. Compare Commencement programs for SCU’s Classes of 1985 and 2025.
| Category | 1985 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| No. of Graduates | 994 | 1,689 |
| Summa cum laude | 1 (0.1%) | 123 (7.3%) |
| Magna cum laude | 33 (3.3%) | 315 (18.7%) |
| Cum laude | 69 (6.9%) | 335 (19.8%) |
| Total honors | 103 (10.4%) | 774 (45.8%) |
What changed over 40 years? How did SCU’s Latin honors go from a 10% chance to nearly 50%? Now, every other student living in your dormitory likely will graduate with Latin honors.
What explains the change? Did incoming SCU undergraduates get smarter? How do SCU undergraduates from the 1980s compare to those who graduated more recently?
At least with respect to SAT scores, there is only a small difference. If you looked at the nominal SAT score changes for SCU students, you would see a big difference. In the 1980s, SCU typically admitted freshmen with a median two-part SAT score of 1180. For the entering class of 2020 (the last class before SCU became test optional), SCU reported a median SAT score of 1360. Comparing these scores requires undoing two sets of recentering SAT scores, one in 1995 and one in 2015. The College Board’s materials show an SAT score of 1180 in 1981 would be roughly equivalent to a current 1320 SAT score. The difference between a 1320 and 1360 score is the difference between an entering SCU first-year student having an 88th percentile score and a 91st percentile score. It’s a difference, but a small one, and probably not enough to explain the 350% increase in graduation honors.
Do college students work harder or study more? Since the 1960s, the time the average full-time student at a four-year college in the United States reported studying has dropped from about twenty-four hours per week to only fourteen hours per week.
Did the faculty become better teachers? This is hard to measure, but one knows that any changes in teaching methods have not translated to improved reasoning or writing. Nationally, test scores on the Collegiate Learning Assessment suggest a substantial percentage of college students show no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing during their first two years of college. Possibly, SCU could be an outlier.
Did standards change? Think about the various fields of study here at SCU. Has accounting changed? Has organic chemistry changed? Have engineering principles changed? Latin honors inflation has infected all of SCU’s schools. The Leavey School of Business has experienced the most. Over half of its 2025 graduates (53.2%) received honors. The School of Engineering experienced the least. Roughly one in three (36.7%) 2025 Engineering majors graduated with honors.
Has the faculty changed how they apply existing standards? Due to various factors, probably. Both Harvard and Yale describe grade inflation as a collective action problem. When some instructors raise their grades, that pressures other instructors to raise their grades too, and the pressure for higher grades snowballs over time, making it hard for any course to hold the line. Anticipated grades correlate highly with student course evaluation ratings. Some professors perceive that lower grading practices discourage students from enrolling in demanding courses. In short, various pressures on faculty favor grade inflation, and almost no benefit exists for faculty to resist it.
For SCU’s Class of 2026, probably every other student will graduate with honors. Grade inflation slowly achieves Syndrome’s goal in The Incredibles. “Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super . . . no one will be.”