What I Read This Week...

Grade inflation in ivy league schools, a new FDA approved sickle cell treatment, and a slow EV charging rollout...

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Caught my eye…

• Nearly 80% of all grades given to undergraduates at Yale last academic year were A’s or A-minuses, up from 67% in the 2010-2011 academic year, prompting concerns that higher grades are becoming less valuable. This isn’t unique to Yale - at Harvard, 79% of all grades given to undergraduates in the 2020-21 year were also A’s or A-minuses, up from just 60% a decade earlier.

• The FDA approved two milestone cell-based gene therapy treatments for sickle cell disease, a rare life-threatening blood disorder caused by genetic defects. One of these therapies, Casgevy, is the first FDA-approved treatment to use CRISPR/Cas9, which is a type of genome editing technology.

• In 2021, the Biden Administration urged Congress to agree to spend $7.5Bn to build thousands of EV chargers to accelerate the transition away from internal combustion engines. While Federal officials have authorized >$2Bn of the funds to be sent to states, the program has yet to install a single charger.

Other reading…

• Google Launches Gemini, the AI Model it Hopes Will Take Down GPT-4 (The Verge)

• China Tells Banks to Roll Over Local Government Debts as Risks Mount (Reuters)

• Slump In Math Scores Exposes Scale Of Pandemic Learning Loss (Forbes)

• University Leaders Hammered After Congressional Hearing on Antisemitism (Axios)

• Solid US Job Growth, Drop in Unemployment Rate Underscore Labor Market Resilience (Reuters)

• Kim Jong Un Tearfully Begs North Korean Women to Have More Kids as Birth Rate Declines (NY Post)

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