Straight As, Empty Minds

When half of graduates receive A’s while increasing numbers of degree holders embrace economic ideas that consistently fail the tests of history and human nature, the problem is no longer merely educational. 

Jim Cardoza | July 30, 2026

One of the most revealing statistics in modern education has nothing to do with reading scores, mathematics proficiency, or scientific literacy. Instead, it concerns grades. According to Hannah Frankman Hood, writing for Daily Economy, roughly half of all students graduating from American high schools now receive an A average. At first glance, this sounds like extraordinary success. Upon closer examination, however, it raises a far more troubling question: if nearly everyone is exceptional, what exactly does “exceptional” mean anymore?

Now place that statistic beside another observation. According to an article by Nate Silver titled “The DSA Sweet Spot: Highly Educated, Downwardly Mobile,” support for democratic socialism is disproportionately concentrated among individuals who possess college degrees but relatively modest incomes. In other words, many of the strongest advocates for socialism have accumulated years of formal education without acquiring the economic success that higher education has traditionally promised.

Viewed independently, each statistic is noteworthy. Viewed together, they paint a disturbing portrait of an educational system that increasingly rewards appearance over achievement while producing graduates who possess credentials without corresponding competence. The result is not merely poor education. It is the cultivation of economic misunderstanding and political ignorance.

Grade inflation represents more than generous teachers handing out easy As. It fundamentally changes the relationship between effort and reward. Historically, grades served as signals. They communicated mastery of difficult material and distinguished extraordinary performance from average work. Employers, universities, and society relied upon those distinctions because they conveyed meaningful information.

When half of all graduates receive the highest possible mark, that signal becomes almost meaningless. Excellence has been democratized not by........

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