Chances are, you’ve met a straight-A college student. There are plenty of them around. And some people aren’t too happy about that. A new wave of “meritocracy” obsessives seem convinced that there are just too many good grades being given out. But what drives our nation’s periodic panic about grade inflation? And what does it tell us about what we want grades to mean?

Related Reading: 

• What Does an A Really Mean? 
• A Real Problem with Grade Inflation
• Who Needs an A? A Lot of Folks on Campus Do 

Guest: Beckie Supiano, Senior Writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.