Grade inflation for everyone is an issue at most colleges. Grades should reflect your credibility in a subject, and should be roughly normalized across subjects. But because they are so important for the rest of one's career, they end up being heavily pressured towards A's -- which results in careers not paying as much attention to them because they're widely understood to be not meaningful. A better world would see the degree itself as marking credibility in the subject, and grades + GPAs not mattering outside of admissions into higher-education or honor programs -- and 'blow-off' degrees removed entirely.

and --

Lots of people care about sports but that's partly cause lots of people in the past cared and baked it into our culture. It's still a perverse misalignment of incentivizes -- education should be about education; university should be about education + social development + various other forms of development. The American university system is largely about sports and partying for lots of people and I hope no one thinks that's healthy. I don't necessarily think the big sports should be cut, but there's no reason in 2020 that a university should regularly have people who are there on, like, golf scholarships. Universities should certainly take remarkable people of all walks of life -- but the emphasis on sports is insanely beyond what is appropriate.

>But because they are so important for the rest of one's career

Seriously?

I'd never even thought about mentioning college grades _in my country_ and if somebody e.g during interview tried to use tham as strong argument then I'd consider it as a red flag

why anybody competent would need to brag about something unreliable as grades?

I wasn't saying that the grades themselves are important for the rest of anyone's career. They're important for determining what happens to you right after school -- how good of a grad school or job you get -- which has exponential returns for the rest of your life.

For people getting their first job it's the difference between getting an interview or not.

> [grades] are so important for the rest of one's career

This isn't really true beyond specific gates (college admission, grad school administration) and for a couple of years after you graduate. 5 years after graduation no one looks at someone's college grades.

> Lots of people care about sports but that's partly cause lots of people in the past cared and baked it into our culture.

What does this mean? Sport is baked into culture but that's because people still like it. And the changing popularity of different sports (eg MMA 25 years ago vs today) shows that this isn't some forced behavior - people like watching and participating.

> What does this mean?

I meant, the reason college sports are such a big deal in America is that they've been growing for decades with the support of tuition, donations, etc -- which is due to the perverse state of American university system. It didn't necessarily have to end up like this, but it would be hard to undo it now because it has become so important to so many people.