Also:
"He said he believes Harvard should adopt an anti-inflation strategy used by Dartmouth College and some other schools: Students receive transcripts with two grades for each class: the grade earned by the student and the median grade in the class. This way, graduate schools, corporate recruiters, and professors themselves know when an A is a common grade or a rare one."
This technique at least offers truth in advertising. However, it can still be abused. A prof can make half the grades (plus one) a "B", and have 49% of the grades "A's", with no "B+" or "A-". Thus half the students will show an "A" compared to the median "B", and the other half will be right at the median, leaving it like Lake Wobegone, with "all the children above (or at) average."
Tell me the Dartmouth profs haven't already figured this one out.
My teaching experiences were mostly at a small state college. We had to admit anyone who had a high school diploma or equivalent. Usually on entrance exams about 1/3 of the students couldn't read at eight grade level and 1/3 read at better than college level with the rest in between. We used to joke that the natural triage was: those who couldn't learn in spite of all you did, those who would learn in spite of all you did, and those who you had to teach.
Let's go all the way and make them rank ordered numeric scores on on a numeric average of all tests, papers, etc.
That way all who view the class know that some kid had a 94% average, but ranked only 40 out of a hundred. The good news for recruiters is that this kid has averaged only one missed answer per 20 question test. Like in the baseball draft, they'll be getting awfully good material at a bargain rate, and probably getting to avoid prima donna wages asked by the yokum at the top of the heap.