No, it’s the standards getting higher at every round. Many of the desirable employers who come to Harvard can afford to pick through people to separate the good Harvard grads from the mediocre ones.
That's why when I go to a fancy restaurant I always send one of the courses back. They need the incentive to improve, and I know they appreciate it because they never thank me.
As others have said in the thread, it's noise over the signal. The top colleges only accept A students, don't they? If I take a class and clearly produce A quality work, I should get an A for it. The fact that all of my cohorts are also A students isn't my problem -- in fact it's no one's problem at all that we're all super good. Forcing a curve is just a deliberate attempt to screw with the data so it looks like it fits that curve better, and how does that help anyone?