1) At the time, when there was talk of professors giving higher grades to enable people to beat the draft, it was men only, and in most cases mentioned, the “inflation” was just enough to lift them from a failing grade (or D) to a passing one. The key concept, supposedly, was not to be responsible for their failing out of college and thus losing 2-S status and becoming draft eligible. There were, anecdotally, a very few profs who decided to give the entire class “A”s as a kind of protest, but I can’t imagine they had significant impact on academe as a whole – except as yet another angle from which to question the significance of grades in general.

2) As others have noted, grade inflation – or at least the perception of it – was not limited to the US. E.g., it was widely perceived at the University of Hong Kong, where I taught for many years, and certainly would have had nothing to do with draft exemption or (affirmative action!) there.

Meanwhile, there are colleges and universities who have been successfully been using written evaluations for decades in place of or in addition to grades. It’s not hard to call out that truly exceptional student in an written evaluation or the brilliant one who could have put more effort and done more than very good—you just say so.

I believe the suggestion is that while grades went up there isn’t an identifiable cause to point to, so no.

I’m not sure if this is helpful to the student. X people in class are dumber/smarter than you seems to me to be less worthwhile than a signifier of how well you understand your material.