Is Academic Inflation Real, Or Is The Internet Just Making It Seem Worse?
Last month I sat in on my 11-year-old’s middle school orientation, and another mom pulled out her phone to show me a screenshot. It was a photo of a 4th grade reading assignment posted to a popular parent Instagram account—10 pages of literary analysis, three primary source citations, a full 5-paragraph argument essay on themes of class in Charlotte’s Web. She leaned in, voice tight, and said, “When I was in 4th grade I was writing one-page book reports and still getting A’s. Is this just how school is now, or is the internet blowing this out of proportion?”
As a part-time K-8 substitute teacher and a mom of two, I’ve been turning that question over for a year now. I’ve seen the data that says average high school GPAs have gone up a full third of a point since 1990, and I’ve stood in the hallway scrolling my For You Page after school, watching 10 college students in a row complain that a 3.7 isn’t even good enough for a part-time internship anymore. It’s easy to think the whole system is inflating out of control. But last semester I had an experience that split the difference for me.
I subbed a 5th grade math class at the same school I attended as a kid. The building had a 1990s history display by the office that semester, put together for the school’s 50th anniversary, and it included a copy of a 1998 5th grade fraction quiz identical to the one I graded that day. I counted them up: out of 24 students I graded that day, 18 got an A or B. Out of 24 students in the 1998 quiz, only 7 got A or B. That’s not an internet illusion—that’s actual grade inflation, right there in black and white.
My sister, a high school guidance counselor, confirmed it for me over dinner a week later. She said part of the shift is intentional: schools know top colleges expect higher grades now, so they’ve relaxed grading standards a little to keep kids competitive. More students also take AP or honors classes these days, which add extra weight to GPAs, pulling the overall average up. Competition for spots at elite colleges is undeniably stiffer than it was 30 years ago, because more students are applying to college overall. So yes, academic inflation is a real thing, at least for that slice of students aiming for selective programs.
But then I asked her how many of her students actually go to those elite programs. Less than 5%, she said. The other 95% are going to regional colleges, community college, or straight into the workforce, and the narrative of universal extreme inflation they see online doesn’t apply to them. That’s where the internet turns a small real trend into something that feels like a crisis for every family.
Think about it: the only homework or GPA that gets posted online is the extreme stuff. The mom with the gifted 4th grade writing assignment posts it because it’s notable, not because it’s typical. The college student panicking about their 3.8 GPA posts about it because they’re stressed about getting into an Ivy League grad program, not because that’s the experience of every college student. The algorithm pushes that extreme content because it gets clicks and engagement, so every parent’s feed is full of examples that don’t reflect what most kids are actually doing.
Last year, my older son, a sophomore in high school, came home from school upset after watching a TikTok that said any kid who wants to get into a decent public university needs three AP classes, 200 hours of volunteer work, and a varsity sport by the end of sophomore year. He only had one AP class, 25 hours of volunteer work shelving books at the local library, and he did rec soccer after school. He was convinced he’d never get into college.
We made an appointment with his guidance counselor that week, and she pulled up the average incoming GPA for the in-state public university he wants to attend. The average was a 3.4, and his GPA was a 3.3. The extracurricular requirements? They just want to see something consistent, not 200 hours of random volunteer work stacked to impress admissions. That’s the concrete answer most kids don’t get from social media.
After that, we put a few small routines in place that work for us. First, whenever a post makes us panic about how far behind we are, we go straight to the source: if it’s about college GPAs, we check the official admissions page of the school we’re looking at, not the TikTok. If it’s about grade level expectations, we check our own school’s parent handbook or shoot a quick email to the teacher asking what average work looks like for that grade. Second, we track my kids’ progress against their own past work, not some random kid online. If my 7th grader can write a clearer 5-paragraph essay than he could last fall, that’s a win, no matter what the gifted kid on Instagram is doing.
Academic inflation isn’t made up. It’s real for the small group of kids competing for spots at the most selective schools. But the internet makes it feel like it’s a universal problem that every parent and kid has to stress about, and that part just isn’t true. I still see those panic-inducing posts every week. I still have to stop myself from comparing my kids to the highlight reels I see online. Some days my older son still stresses about falling behind. But the little routines we’ve built keep us from blowing the problem out of proportion. Most days, that’s enough.
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