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I thought 4.0 was tops.

You are 20 years behind. 4.0 was the very top when you and I went to school. Then grade inflation made 4.0 as common as dirt. So they added "honors" classes which could push you over 4.0. Then grade inflation took off again because they dumbed down the honors classes.

Why did they do that? Because minorities were underrepresented in the top achievers group. To fix that and create rewards for the truly brilliant, they created "Advaned Placement" classes to push GPAs into the mid- to high-4 range.

I'll give you one guess as to what's happening now.

My sister is a teacher and I get an earful about this stuff all the time.

That's not why they made honors classes 5.0 and AP classes either 5.0 or 6.0. It was to encourage people to take the harder classes. If you get the same 4.0 for the very tough college course as you would for the easy class designed for IQs around 90, and you were worried about college entry, why take the much harder course and risk getting a B-D instead of an easy A?

Grade inflation didn't take off until about 15 years ago and has really picked up in the last 5.