The Atlantic, Should We Redistribute Grades Like We Do Income?, by Megan McArdle:

Robin Hanson has been arguing that perhaps along with redistributing income, we should redistribute grades.  I have myself been known to argue that perhaps we should consider redistributing PhDs and Harvard professorships. …

I think you can distinguish the two.  For example, to the extent that the function of education is signaling, messing up the signal would help no one; it would simply destroy the value of the signal.  Perhaps the sorting and competitive impetus provided by GPAs are more valuable to individuals and society than those functions are when they’re being served by income.But the poor quality of the arguments for difference does not bode well.  They suggest that most of us just want to redistribute income because, well, we wanna . . . not because we have any particularly good reason.  Which was Robin’s point in the first place.