On May 19, Harvard University faculty voted to cap the number of A’s professors could hand out at 20% per course, with an allowance of an additional four A’s per class. This follows months of debate over Harvard’s grade inflation — a “crisis” we’re witnessing at higher-ed institutions across the country. A 25-page report, released last October by Harvard dean of undergraduate education Amanda Claybaugh, concluded that Harvard’s current grading system was “damaging the academic culture of the College.”
In a statement to the New York Times, Claybaugh called on the rest of higher education to follow Harvard’s lead. She explained that she hoped the new policy would “encourage other institutions to confront similar questions with the same level of rigor and courage.” Harvard made a risky decision with this policy, leaning on the weight of their name in hopes that we’ll join their club. Their eyes are now on the rest of the Ivy League; their hand is extended to us. It is crucial we leave them hanging.
The rationale behind this massive reform is shaky at best. In her report, Claybaugh went on to explain that the cap on A grades would “restore the integrity of our [Harvard’s] grading and return the academic culture of the College to what it was in the recent past.” Last school year, about two-thirds of Harvard undergraduate letter grades were A’s. The recent past Harvard is referring to — the 2012-2013 academic year — boasted around 35% A’s.
Undeniably, A’s are growing more common. To some, that’s a major threat to the integrity of higher ed — Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker told the Times that grade inflation has “turned universities into national laughingstocks.” Yet, I’d argue, along with 94% of Harvard students, that grade inflation isn’t even close to as problematic as its remedies.
Firstly, I’ll address the fallacies in Claybaugh’s 25-page report. One of the strikingly obvious explanations for the increase in A’s is the decrease in acceptance rate. In 1990, Harvard’s acceptance rate was 18%, a number I struggle to wrap my head around given last year’s 3.19%. As the selected students become increasingly exceptional, it is only natural that student performance, across the board, increases with them. In order to qualify the rise in A grades as an “inflation crisis,” there must be a traceable misalignment between the grades administered and the students’ quality of work and effort. In the spring of 2025, Harvard students reported spending 6.30 hours per week outside of class for each of their courses. In the spring of 2015, they reported spending 5.55.
Despite this data, Harvard’s rationale rests on professors’ perspectives. In a survey administered by the Harvard Crimson, 69% of professors either “agreed” or “somewhat agreed” that students do not sufficiently prioritize their coursework.” I won’t belabor the obvious voluntary-response bias and the tendency for professors to be all-around cranky, but I struggle to take that statistic seriously, let alone view it as grounds for a school-wide policy. Claybaugh, in her report, went on to pull from anecdata, stating that “faculty in the humanities and interpretive social sciences report that they’ve had to trim some readings and drop others entirely, that they’ve had to switch from novels to short stories, and that it’s difficult to keep assigning reading in the face of increasing student complaints.”
Lastly, Harvard calls out Dartmouth by name, citing the ineffectiveness of our past attempts to fight grade inflation— such as showing medians on transcripts and encouraging students to take harder classes. They also point to the fact that Princeton University and Wellesley College both enacted the very same grade caps Harvard plans to incorporate and rescinded them less than 10 years later. Claybaugh’s takeaway from this list of failures? These policies should not be enacted in isolation, but rather in unison. Again, the logic here is shaky: Why is Harvard so certain those policies will be harmonious, especially given their isolated failures?
I disagree with the notion that the increase of A’s is a “grade inflation crisis,” but, even if I’m wrong, and it somehow is, Harvard’s solution is still a catastrophe. Under Harvard’s new framework, peer collaboration, a key tenet to higher education, will absolutely erode. Ivy League students, already devastatingly competitive and addicted to A’s, will have no opportunity to develop the incredibly valuable and increasingly necessary skill that is teamwork. Late-night study sessions with potential new friends, shared study guides, class group chats — all out the window. In our modern era of regressive head-butting and cold shoulders, we should be training the next generation of leaders to be collaborative thinkers and team players.
The job market is already a nightmare for college undergrads, and this policy is shooting them in the foot and the face. Harvard trusts that its reputation will command respect and understanding from employers regarding its grade inflation strategy — maybe they’re right — but I don’t think a Harvard 3.4 next to a Stanford University 4.0 gets the extra mile of grade-inflation calculation that the Harvard administration is betting on. If this policy proves to be devastating for Harvard students looking for jobs, and I think it will be, then they could witness a plummet in prospective student applications. After all, why apply to Harvard and work every hour of every day to get a B+ and a disappointing job when you could apply to Yale University, which enforces no such cap? Relativity is this policy’s demise: They need the rest of the Ivy League to follow suit. Harvard is dangling in the wind, checking its shoulders, praying that the rest of America’s elite institutions follow its lead.
That’s where you come in, President Beilock. Harvard made this decision — this gamble — with you and the other Ivy League presidents in mind. Their logic is unsound and their policy is punishing. Dartmouth grading does not need to be “fixed” by Harvard. From my experience, the few attempts made by Dartmouth departments to combat grade inflation — namely, the enforced medians across government and economics classes — have resulted in a dearth of student collaboration and a mass exodus away from the major and towards unenforced departments. There is no doubt in my mind that the grade inflation question is at the forefront of Dartmouth administration’s mind. Do not blindly follow Harvard’s lead. Do not punish our student body. We’re not just getting more A’s; we’re earning more A’s. To be punished for that would be unjust.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
