A lot of the "stress" of grades seems to be bucketed into a general claim of ego-shattering "I'm different and moreover lesser than my better peers!" effect. I

A lot of the "stress" of grades seems to be bucketed into a general claim of ego-shattering "I'm different and moreover lesser than my better peers!" effect. I think it would be bad if we got rid of grades based on that philosophy of coddling. The more significant cause of stress I think is simply that grades are tied to things beyond the student's particular ranking in a class. The article mentions that the possible beginning of the inflation trend was the simple relation of your grades to the likelihood of being shipped off to Vietnam. Since then it's only gotten worse, and I can think of several other things grades now tie in to. If your grades are bad enough, you might lose your funding that allows you to go to school in the first place, and you need that for the pretty much unrelated problem of tuition being ridiculously high. (I don't really think the students-as-customers mentality that has developed also comes along with a I've-paid-now-give-me-an-A mentality.) I would find the threat of losing a scholarship a lot more stressful than the fact that some people in my class are smarter and/or work harder than me, and knowing a few people with such scholarships I was amazed by their apparent composure come finals season. If your grades are bad enough, certain companies won't look at you when you apply. This has become less of a deal in tech (though one place I interviewed at did ask for my GPA) but is still a common filter. If your grades are bad enough, graduate programs won't have you even with a strongly worded letter of recommendation from one of your professors. The article proposes some sort of top-down solution (from the government's department of education?) is needed. Maybe that can work, I'm skeptical. The approach is at odds with keeping rankings private to the school and unconnected to external things.