Harvard admits a lot of people not actually capable of doing the work. Rigorous grades would expose those people. The patterns among those people would embarr

Harvard admits a lot of people not actually capable of doing the work. Rigorous grades would expose those people. The patterns among those people would embarrass the policies driving those admissions, and expose the school to criticisms, probably unfair, that it prefers to avoid. Better to give everyone an A and avoid all the controversy. This is almost certainly deteriorating the overall quality of the education available at Harvard -- why kill yourself to get the same A as everyone else? Even if professors want to encourage excellence, how can they signal it? When I graduated in the mid-80s, Ivy League grads were distinctly more capable than those from my pretty good school. From what I see this is no longer the case.