What the Germans call Schadenfreude taking pleasure in the pain of others is never more delicious than when those in pain are prominent, powerful, prosperous and conceited. So it is understandable that a wave of pure delight is now coursing through the rest of higher education as Harvard-probably America's greatest university, and certainly its most arrogant-licks a self-inflicted wound known as grade inflation. The wound in time will heal, but it has exposed weakness and hypocrisy that make Harvard something of a joke. The matter first came to light a couple of months ago when the Boston Globe reported, in a first-rate series by Patrick Healy, on 'Harvard's dirty little secret: Since the Viet Nam era, grade inflation has made its top prize for students-graduating with honours-virtually meaningless.' That is because in the Class of 2001, 'a record 91 M of Harvard students graduated summa, magna, or cum laude, for more than at Yale (51%), Princeton (44%), and other elite universities.' Healy continued: 'While the world regards these students as the best of the best of America's 13 million undergraduates, Harvard honours have actually become the laughingstock of the Ivy League.' It's hard to say which of these figures is more astonishing: the 51% A's, the 91% graduating with honours, or the B-minus for honours. Taken individually or collectively, these figures depict an undergraduate college in which there is no longer any meaningful distinction among the excellent, the satisfactory and the mediocre. Grade inflation does not seem to be as out of control at most other places as it is at Harvard, but it is a widespread problem. Its causes are complex. Prospective employers are now looking for high grades and honours diplomas one corporate recruiter told Healy, 'A degree from Harvard is very good, but honours certainly helps it along it indicates someone has really worked hard.' A report, by the Educational Policy Committee of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences revealed that grade inflation is most visible in the humanities. The chairman of the classics department told the Crimson, 'The humanities are less empirically based--there's less of a distinction between right and wrongand more latitude for subjectivity.' Yes, it's true-as Harvard's defenders have been quick to point out that undergraduates there are of the first rank and that they should be expected to do superior work by the simple fact of their having been admitted in the first place. Yet not all superior students do equally superior work. If a college must give grades and honours-and a credentials-obsessed society insists that it do so—then it should make every effort to ensure that those grades and honours have meaning. No American university is so well placed as Harvard to set high standards and demand that students, if they wish to receive academic honours, meet them. In this hour of its embarrassment, it has an opportunity to set an example by doing precisely that. Why do people in all the other universities in America experience great pleasure in seeing Harvard dealing with the problem of grade inflation?