HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Getting What Students Pay For In College. “Seventeen of the 50 schools require two or fewer of seven key subjects and another 21 require only three. At many schools the grading standards have grown weak, too. Between 1960 and 2006, the University of Michigan saw its average GPA increase by 0.65, the University of Wisconsin at Madison by 0.7, and the University of California at Berkeley by 0.76–almost the whole way from a C+ to a B+ average. Across schools in the study, large increases are the rule, not the exception.”