What does an A mean anymore?

Graphic by Zoe Arntsen, Illustrator

An A still looks the same on a transcript, but nationally, 60% of faculty say they have lowered their grading expectations because students are arriving less prepared. This statistic raises a question that doesn’t appear on any resume: does an A mean anything?

A 2026 Chronicle of Higher Education investigation found that faculty across the country have quietly lowered their standards. The pressure comes from student course evaluations, administrators focused on retention and students arriving underprepared.

Not everyone has followed suit.

Halina Goetz, a former Chapman math professor, spent more than 30 years teaching math in the United States after growing up in Poland. She is retired now, but she rebuilt her grading system a decade ago and never looked back.

Her system worked like this: students complete large problem sets over two weeks. Show up and attempt every problem, right or wrong, and a student earns 40% percent automatically. The other 60% depends on how well they actually did on problems Goetz randomly picks to grade. 

Goetz says that confusion doesn't indicate a bad teacher, that effort alone shouldn't guarantee an A and that a high GPA doesn't necessarily reflect true knowledge.

"Grades should be based only on how well a student is able to apply the new knowledge," Goetz said.

When students started expecting test questions to look exactly like their review sheets, she pushed back.

"I told the students I don't have to do the same things other teachers do," she said. "Especially when what they do is very wrong."

Her system is also hard to cheat. Goetz said she can spot AI-generated work because AI does not show its steps. Any student who submits it gets a zero.

"If they skip even one step, I know where they got the solution from," she said. "No exceptions."

Jaime Campbell, director of the Writing Center and an instructional professor of English, has taught writing at Chapman for more than 15 years and has seen both sides of how AI affects student writers.

"AI use has negatively impacted many student writers' confidence," Campbell said. "There is this insecurity involved in writing without it for some students."

For others, the choice to reject it entirely has had the opposite effect.

"I have also seen many students who take a strong stance against AI, and in these cases, it can fuel confidence and strength in one's own voice," Campbell said.

In her English 103 course, students write a first draft by hand in class. Then they get feedback from three places – a peer, a Writing Center consultant and AI. They revise using all three. Then they write a reflection on what each kind of feedback gave them, and what it could not.

For Campbell, grading and learning were never separate to begin with.

"I'd like to think that in my courses, to get the A, you have to learn along the way," she said.

Kendra Day teaches computer ethics, assistive technology and human factors at the Fowler School of Engineering. Before coming to Chapman, she spent years as a special education teacher. That background shapes everything about how she runs her classes.

Day is a believer in Universal Design for Learning, a framework that aims to create learning environments that are accessible and challenging for every student, rather than treating differences as deficits.

She has international students, students with disabilities and students from nearly every college on campus. A single test, she said, cannot capture what all of them know.

"Not everybody performs well on tests," Day said. "Can they write a paper? Maybe it's a group presentation. Maybe it's a group project."

In her Human Factors course, that philosophy replaced the final exam entirely. Students now build a website that demonstrates all the design principles covered during the semester. The goal is not regurgitation — it is thinking.

Thinking, for Day, shows up in participation. She stopped grading attendance years ago after realizing it meant nothing. A student who sits in class and says nothing has not shown her anything. A student who engages, questions and pushes back has.

"The level of thinking is through the engagement, through the class participation," Day said. "The questions that they're asking, the comments that they make amongst each other."

If that standard is met, she said, she has no problem with the grade that follows.

"I will deal with administration if I give you all A’s," Day said. "If I've done my job well, and you put in the effort and you try, I would be happy to give you all A’s."

Her measure of success has never been a grade distribution. It is simpler than that.

"I want them to walk out (of my class) and think," Day said. "’If I can do that, I feel like I've succeeded.’"

As grading becomes more difficult for educators, there is no shortage of ways to determine what an A still means.