My friends who are parents of college-age children have a new favorite thing to complain about, and it isn’t tuition, although it’s close. It’s grades, or more precisely how easy it is, even at the most expensive institutions, to get an A. That’s the grade you get for showing up to class reasonably often, turning in work reasonably OK, and being reasonably awake and hygienic while doing so.

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When I was last in school, an A meant excellent, a B meant good, and a C meant average. An average essay, with average insights and an average amount of effort behind it, got a C. Maybe on a good day, from a professor who liked you, you could weasel into a C-plus.

If you’re somewhere in your 30s or early 40s, you might recall that an average essay got a B. Probably even a B-plus. The entire scale slid up a notch and a half, and suddenly everyone........

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