I'd argue that an equivalent education isn't that meaningful of a statement though. Top schools come with a lot more opportunities. Connections is a big one. My undergrad didn't do research and several top schools require a publication for admission to graduate school. An opportunity I never even had (a common lack of opportunity for many university students. There's only so many R1 unis). I definitely agree that you'll get a similar education at a large number of schools (after all, there are only so many professorships available and it is extremely competitive), but I think it would also be a mistake to believe that there is an equal outcome between schools. Prestige may be a confounder, but it is unfortunately a meaningful metric and students know this.

Grades don’t measure opportunities.

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here—should Harvard students get better grades because they are getting a better value out of their education than peers who are performing at the same level? I don’t think that’s a reasonable way for grades to work.

If you’re not talking about grade inflation, if you’re just talking about whether it’s meaningful to compare education—I’d still say that it’s meaningful to compare the education you get at different universities. There’s plenty of room for cynicism, but I think people are sometimes too cynical about the value of the actual education that college provides. It’s well-known that people who are knowledgeable in a particular subject overestimate how easy the subject is to learn and overestimate the general public’s knowledge of that subject. In short, a chemistry major will think that chemistry is not so hard, and maybe conclude that they didn’t get much of an education in college. You can think of this as the flipside to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Ignorant people overestimate their abilities, and knowledgeable people also overestimate the abilities of ignorant people. Rephrased—smart people undervalue knowledge!

I’m not going to try and make the case that the world is some kind of meritocracy, but I’d still place my bets on a 10% better student than on a student going to a 10% more prestigious school.

I would guess the point of the other poster might be that even if students accepted to Harvard know that they can get an equivalent education elsewhere that they would still be motivated to go to Harvard over the other schools regardless. Unless there was a specific reason to go to the other schools (such as Cal Tech being a better science and engineering school than Harvard).

Perhaps an inference which could be drawn from this is that Harvard, as an institution itself, doesn't need to inflate grades in order to get and retain students. It could more harshly grade to no ill effect to itself. Whereas most other schools can't.

Harvard can also afford to annoy a significant number of the legacy donor class. Why they don't is not fully explained by comparison to other schools (who often actually need the money to stay open). A guess as to why they avoid annoying the donor class is camaraderie and opportunities (for themselves, and possibly also for students). The opportunities is a reason they would mostly share with other schools, the camaraderie, less so.

"If you think the explanation for why this happens at Harvard is different for the explanation for why this happens to most of the rest of the US, then you would want to explain what makes Harvard different."

Edit to add: On a tangent I would guess that harsh grading at Harvard (and other elite schools) would be net beneficial to students. I've read of students who made it all the way through elite structures and then, when hit with a failure or blowback in the real world, either can't cope (suicide), or cope poorly (FTX/Alameda Research). School seems seriously serious when you're a young student, but it's primary purpose is to train for the adult world. Schools need to follow this policy of training, and they need to let their students know that failure is expected, and okay, even if it can't be 'pivoted' away from.

Yes, this is more in line with my thinking. To put part of what you said more simply: businesses care more about the Harvard name than the Harvard grade. Meaning you could have lower grades than other people you're competing with in the job market (especially if Harvard publicized that they were reducing grade inflation).

Here in EU the solution we have is to simply have formal rules that a university can only give 10% As, 25% Bs, etcetera.

This isn't enforced per class, but should prevent grade inflation. It might get weird in competition with people from US schools though, when someone with straight As is found to be a C+ student.

This was reasonably common about three generations ago in the US, and the one thing I can say for certain, is that such a system is bad pedagogy.

The purpose of grades should be to inform students of their performance relative to expectations / benchmarks. It should not be used to rank students against each other.

Yes, but in the US grades are used for selection, so it seems reasonable to keep them comparable.

Since we in the EU have the Bologna system French and Italian students will come to Sweden and Swedish students go to French universities, and if some universities are just handing out As or others grade properly it will become strange.

I think it's actually useful to be able to see the people able to perform at the 10% level in hard classes. For example, suppose that a student in a less prestigious subject takes a hard class in a more prestigious subject, and performs at the top 10% level-- it seems reasonable that he should be able to show that off with a grade that is genuinely high.

Furthermore, top 10% performance is something to strive for. Top 40% performance, it's not very good. It means you've maybe understood most of the course, but it doesn't mean the ability to creatively apply the material, which top 10% in fact can.