I think most people understand grades aren't purely a measure of how well you know a subject, but also related to how much your parents donated to the university, or how important you are to the football team.
What should devastate people's trust in educational institutions is the relationship between Harvard and Epstein. We get to watch this university, whom I'm told is full of the world's smartest people, claim it was ignorant of what was really going on.
Harvard gave a sex trafficker a security card and his own office while he paid them millions. Harvard faculty was even joining him at his parties, I find it hard to believe what he was doing was really a secret.
Regarding grading: I am a professor at a large American state university where football is king. I have never been pressured to change a grade for the kinds of reasons you mention.
I'm not saying that grading is perfect -- measuring what has been learned is hard, and there can be pressure not to be too harsh overall. But this sort of corruption is, in my observation, not widespread.
Then what's the point of telling us that you've never been pressured to change a football players grade? Obviously nobody is going to pressure you to change a grade for a student not in your class.
Because I've learned some about the way academia works -- where pressure comes from, and how it operates.
If the administration tried to hatch some conspiracy to inflate the grades of athletes or legacy students or whoever, ... then a quarter of the faculty would rebel, and the other three-quarters wouldn't even notice. Senior administrators send out lots of emails concerning this or that, and when they say to jump, nobody is scrambling to ask how high.
(1) To the best of my observation -- and I read Inside Higher Ed regularly -- this certainly happens but it's not common.
(2) AFAICT, when it does happen, it happens through known channels. e.g. there might be a few classes or majors which have a reputation as going easy on athletes, and instructors there might be asked to stay in line.
I'm not saying it never happens, but it's certainly uncommon enough that "grades are meaningless" isn't really true.
Suppose you had an important football player in a class, and because of a grade you gave he missed a big game, do you believe there would be negative repercussions?
If so, there's at least a little bit of pressure towards passing those students. I wouldn't even call it "corruption", just normal human bias that everyone is guilty of.
I don't speak from experience, but I believe the answer to be "probably not" -- at least not on the academic side of things. There would be repercussions for the player of course, and maybe also for the special tutors that athletes get to keep them academically on track. But I doubt the athletics office would even try to contact me or my department chair. Dealing with academic bureaucracies is a giant pain in the ass, and I certainly wouldn't try to make it easier for them.
I think there are typically a handful of classes that are known to be "athlete friendly" and I can imagine pressure existing there. Indeed, here is one example I have read about:
Yes, a report written by the vice president found they did nothing seriously wrong. Doesn't change my mind much because I already knew their stance on the whole thing.
Everybody loved Epstein right up until he got caught, and nobody had a clue what he was doing. This is the position of everybody involved with Epstein, not just Harvard. Call me dumb but I'm not buying it.
What should devastate people's trust in educational institutions is the relationship between Harvard and Epstein. We get to watch this university, whom I'm told is full of the world's smartest people, claim it was ignorant of what was really going on.
Harvard gave a sex trafficker a security card and his own office while he paid them millions. Harvard faculty was even joining him at his parties, I find it hard to believe what he was doing was really a secret.