LOL The problem is with grade inflation, even GPAs are meaningless now—that is why there is no respect at these ceremonies.....if they are public schools, they are completely meaningless, now.
The diploma is just a guarantee that the graduates are useful idiots, completed government brainwashing system. It is like GK Chesterton stated years ago—the only reason for mandatory “education” is to destroy Common Sense (reason) in the Common people.
JS Mill stated the same thing almost—that when the State controls “education”, it will just make slaves for the State and will never educate.
Without Excellence (Virtue), and most schools ejected Excellence and Merit decades ago for PC (Marxism—radical egalitarianism when they dumped Classical Education for socialism of Dewey)-—there is no ...um....virtue/excellence.
That was the stated intent of John Dewey the father of modern government education in the USA.