Are Easy A’s Too Widespread in Academia?

Across universities today, raw GPAs treat an A in advanced econometrics the same as an A in introductory film studies. Standard grading systems inadvertently penalize students who challenge themselves and reward those who course-shop.

In this episode, we speak with Harvard Business School Professor Scott Kominers about his recent paper that looks at how mathematical market design and "eigengrades" can strip out course difficulty to measure actual student performance. The paper proposes a fixed-effects model—using student overlap across courses—to isolate true academic capability. We explore how this simple structural fix could end the strategic game of course-shopping.