Also, grades don't have a lot of signal in the humanities because there's such a wide spectrum of easy vs. hard grading. Some English professors give one A ever

Also, grades don't have a lot of signal in the humanities because there's such a wide spectrum of easy vs. hard grading. Some English professors give one A every 5 years. Others give 75+ percent A's. I don't think it's as common as people make it out to be, but there are students who game the system, and the crass pre-professionals (though a minority) fuck it up for the rest of the students who haven't yet been corrupted by the corporate world and genuinely want to learn. Gaming the system is a lot harder to do in, say, linear algebra or real analysis or quantum mechanics. The corporate world is deeply negative and anti-humanistic and will typecast you to the lowest calibre of person consistent with your resume. The issue in English is that the floor is lower. It has little to do with the ceiling. (Yes, there are plenty of English teachers from whom it's harder to get an A than it is to get an A in an advanced math class.) It's about what is concluded about someone when the worst possibility is assumed.