Back in 2007, the average Uber driver rating was 3.74 stars. Nine years later, that number had increased to 4.85.
This rise in ratings happened because both drivers and passengers have strong incentives to keep the stars high. Drivers want five-star ratings because they lead to more business. Passengers feel pressured to give five stars to avoid the guilt of potentially hurting a driver’s livelihood and avoid the headache of receiving a subpar rider rating in return if the driver suspects they will receive a low score.
In the end, however, everyone loses. Exceptional drivers no longer stand out, and passengers cannot accurately judge driver quality.
Grades at Brown have followed a similar trajectory as Uber ratings. The percentage of As given out yearly at Brown has ballooned from 39% in 1993 to 67% by 2021. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for talented students to distinguish themselves academically. To compensate, students overload their schedules with stressful and time-consuming extracurricular activities curated to impress employers and graduate schools, who have become acclimated to perfect transcripts from Brown students.
Thus, the intense competition for grades instead manifests in non-academic areas like clubs and career development at Brown. While grade competition has the potential to be detrimental to students, it fits better with the University’s mission of promoting rigorous inquiry than the race to join the best consulting club. A moderate and cautious increase in grade competition, coupled with a decrease in competition outside of the classroom, will result in more learning and less stressed students.
Here are two suggestions of how to do this: First, to increase academic competition, a maximum of 55% of students in a given class should receive As. Second, to decrease non-academic competition, pre-professional clubs cannot have complicated, interview-based selection processes. They must provide opportunities for all interested students and function more like University-run career-building programs.
Brown’s cap on As would work better than previous attempts by other universities to reduce grade inflation because it is far more generous. For example, Princeton capped the maximum number of As at a dramatically low 35% until 2014. The result was stressed, tired and unhappy students and professors that were equally harried from having to deal with them. In contrast, Brown would only cap As at 55%, which is just 12% less than the proportion of As in 2021. This cap would simply move the percentage of As back to around pre-pandemic levels. Furthermore, there would still be no limit on the number of Ss. Unlike Princeton students, Brown students would be able to exercise the Satisfactory/No Credit grading option in classes where competition could truly take a toll on their mental health.
Brown students have already demonstrated that a cap on As would not be a significant detriment to their college experience. After all, my suggested limit of 55% of students getting As is far higher than the already-existing guidelines in Brown’s Economics Department — which have not prevented about half of the student body from taking an economics class.
For this increase in grading competition to be productive, the University must decrease competition outside of the classroom. The first step is to make career-oriented clubs more of a collective resource than the beginning of the McKinsey recruiting process. Though these clubs provide valuable career training, they are also corporatized — featuring hierarchical structures and commonly using jargon like “deliverables” — and exclusive, which is antithetical to Brown’s emphasis on learning and intellectual exploration. They often require essays and interviews just to get in. If an applicant makes it through this rigorous process, their reward is working hard (for free), in exchange for connections and a good resume item.
To help more students and better align with the ethos of the University, these clubs could perhaps switch to a model where students sign up for a lottery at the beginning of each semester to fill available spots. This way, all students will have an equal chance of getting this career training. To allow the clubs to still remain effective at servicing clients, students who perform particularly well can still advance to higher positions in the clubs. Furthermore, these clubs should be required to hold workshops with the career center and Department Undergraduate Groups to expose students to new industries.
Though these interventions will be helpful, they only address the immediate symptoms of grade inflation, not the broader cause: the “students-as-consumers” model. Students pay tuition and expect not just knowledge but high grades as a return on their investment.
The parallels between Uber’s rating inflation and Brown’s grade inflation both stem from the same transactional mindset. When education becomes as consumer-driven as an Uber ride, it develops similar, hard-to-solve problems. Just as Uber ratings fail to show true driver quality, inflated grades may fail to reflect real academic achievement. In both cases, the push to keep ratings high distorts the original goal of measuring quality.
Though these problems are deep, making grading a bit more competitive while making extracurriculars much less competitive should be a good recalculation. These measures will help ensure that Brown remains a five-star university.
Ben Aizenberg ’26 can be reached at benjamin_aizenberg@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
