i don't think I've ever understood the point of letter grades and especially of GPA. what is it even meant to measure? clearly not mastery over material since w

i don't think I've ever understood the point of letter grades and especially of GPA. what is it even meant to measure? clearly not mastery over material since we can see from this article we've seen a steady increase (while i don't think anyone is claiming students have gotten that much better). relative rank, then? again no because of the change over time. i believe we should have two separate measures. one, did you pass the class? and two, what was your percentile within that course? of course percentile isn't necessarily relevant to employers. but then I would argue that should already be the case with GPA. at least the benefit with percentile is it can't experience inflation like this, and gives you a comparable value across colleges. one would be able to make judgements on, would i want a 95th percentile state school candidate or a 5th percentile ivy? with the current system this is impossible.