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I have a moderate scholarship to a school at the low end of the top 100. To keep it, I need a 3.2. That's one A and four Bs in a typical five-course semester. There is very little room for C grades, and a single failure is damning.
...which isn't much of a problem, since C's are definately below average here. It takes a hearty amount of skipped classes, missed assignments, and tests gone completely unprepared for to pull a C in most classes. I get perhaps one teacher for whom B and A grades are reserved for excellent performance. B's can almost always be achieved with only the most minimal of effort, and many times A's are given to half the class or more. I coasted through my first semester to a 4.0, and now that I've taken the odd class here and there where a B actually does indicate superior performance and an A is given to only the top handful I've settled to around a 3.7. I am not the best student in the world, but this is the level of difficulty I've experienced college classes are now on.
The same was true in high school. I'd say something between a quarter and a third of my class graduated with perfect 4.0's, since a cumulative average of 93% or better in all classes across all 4 years was scored as one. An 100% grade was far from unattainable in most classes, and anything in the 80s or below was seen as very shoddy. Sure, there were kids that threw it all out the window and just skipped and did drugs all day, but even the most average of students that more or less did they work they were supposed to easily graduated with something in the middle 3's on a 4.0 scale.
In the great race for admissions and scholarships to higher schools, the emphasis has shifted away from grades because of the fact that a 4.0 means almost nothing now. In talking to high school counselors about college scholarships and college counselors about graduate school scholarships, I've been told time and again that students need to really beef up their brag sheets beyond just good grades in order to get recognized for anything. Do extracurriculars. Do something academic over the summer even if you don't get credit for it, or try to look like you'll eventually make your would-be school look good by doing volunteer work. Make sure your personal statements or essay responses are top-notch, because there is where they'll be looking for the 4.0 who actually has a soul over the 4.0 who went to Kaplan looking for the formula sure-thing essay. Standardized tests. If school is now easy enough that everyone can get a perfect score, ACTs and LSATs are not yet. Some people cry foul. My kid doesn't test well is a common wail. I think, though, that the argument that the dedication implied by a high grade is more important than the raw aptitude demonstrated by a test should hold water. The problem is that those consistent high grades don't mean anything these days. The sharper fellow that screwed around a lot in school knowing he could pull A's on the ease of the system has a 4.0 and a 32 where the slower guy who was determined to bust his balls and get the good grades no matter the cost has a 4.0 and a 26.
I think this is just the result of a system in which we've decided that the best schools have the kids with the best grades. There are still some checks in place to make sure schools don't just give A's to -everyone-, but each school is quite strongly motivated to give out the highest grades it can get away with.
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