EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: A bit of healthy competition is normal, and not everyone deserves an A ‘trophy’
Have A grades become the new “everyone deserves a trophy” at one of America’s most prestigious universities?
Some of the comments coming from Yale University students and faculty suggest that mentality regarding a proposed policy to curtail grade inflation. In 2024-2025, A’s and A minus’s accounted for 81 percent of all grades, the Yale Daily News reports.
Multiple concerns have been raised about capping A grades, but one in particular stands out. Both students and faculty have raised it. The argument goes that, if Yale institutes a limit on A grades, students will become more competitive and less cooperative.
“I think that right now, Yale is very unique. It’s special because it has an environment where students are encouraged to engage with each other, help each other through assignments and to rely on one another to learn,” student Elden Agee told the Yale Daily News this week.
“I think that with grade deflation or a grade cap, that community goes away. Instead of seeing each other as classmates, we would be seeing each other as competitors,” Agee said.
Faculty raised a very similar concern in a resolution that passed Sept. 24:
“Grades are a significant source of student stress with consequences for student wellbeing including increasing competition and reducing collaborative learning, diminishing student investment in exploration, and has been found to be particularly harmful for students who were racially or socioeconomically marginalized.” (emphasis added)
Will grade caps turn peers into enemies? Doubtful. And if they do, those relationships are incredibly tenuous anyway. Competition and collaboration can occur together.
Not everyone deserves an A grade in the same way that not every athlete deserves a trophy. It used to be common for parents to teach their children the reality of mediocre talents and failures. Even exceptionally gifted children were told that somewhere, someday there would be someone who is better at XZY than them, and that’s ok.
If students really stop studying together because they’re worried a peer will “steal” their A, maybe Yale should start teaching some lessons in humility.
And it can start now. New messaging from the faculty could go a long way toward promoting the value of healthy competition within peer collaboration. It could teach students to value themselves for who they are, not just what they can accomplish. And there’s nothing wrong with a B!
The university certainly has time to start sending this message. On Monday, Dean Pericles Lewis told the student newspaper that any new grading policies won’t go until effect until the fall of 2028.
MORE: Getting an A at Harvard will be tougher starting in 2027
MORE: Consider ‘student stress’ in efforts to curb grade inflation, Yale faculty resolution says
