Riddle me this Batman . . .

GPAs Rising, Rising, Rising

. . . how is it possible to achieve higher GPA's when 75% of the high school student body matriculates to college, compared to the days of yore when only 25% of the student body matriculated?

​My children argue it is because the students of today are more intelligent! Even a cursory review of YouTube would prove this theory questionable (links at the end).

"This inflation does not reflect an increase in student achievement. Instead, according to Rojstaczer, colleges have felt pressure to reward students more and more lavishly for the same performance as higher education transformed into a “consumer-based culture” starting in the 1980s. “Students are paying more for a product every year, and increasingly they want and get the reward of a good grade for their purchase.” This explanation is complementary to Ross Dothan’s 2005 observation that neoliberalism produced a kind of “crisis of confidence” in academia, especially in the humanities, as its purpose changed from imbuing students with lifelong truths to maximizing their advantage in a competitive marketplace."

I agree with Mead's solution. 

"This further strengthens the case, which we have been made more than once, for a standardized testing system to measure student performance across colleges. In addition to undermining intellectual standards, the lack of a rigorous college assessment system probably also favors students from elite schools at the expense of everyone else—if employers can’t count on student GPAs to deliver valuable information, they are more likely to defer to the quality of school attended. So a carefully constructed system of exams could help beef up standards, restrain inflation, and level the playing field by helping the many determined and ambitious students from West Texas State prove that they are just as capable as their Ivy League counterparts."