Grade inflation is out of control at Harvard—and most top colleges in America.
In 1950, the average GPA at Harvard College was 2.55, between a B− and a C+. But that norm has given way to one in which top marks are the norm, and any deviation from the top grade needs to be justified by professors pointing to some serious deficiency in students’ work. Today, the average GPA at Harvard is 3.8, between an A and an A−. Even when I was completing my PhD at Harvard about a decade ago, undergrads had the expectation that an A was the natural recompense for competent work. By all accounts, things have grown worse since.
For the past months, a band of courageous faculty members at Harvard have been trying to convince their colleagues to fix the problem. On Tuesday, however, that effort came to a standstill.
Here’s what happened: In February, a faculty subcommittee proposed a package of measures that would standardize grades across courses and limit how many students could obtain A’s. Instructors would be able to give A’s to no more than 20 percent of their students (though A− grades, notably, would still have been unlimited).
