Harvard Faculty Vote to Cap A Grades Despite Strong Student Opposition

Harvard University will impose a 20 percent cap on A grades per course after a majority of faculty voted in favor of the direct effort to curb rampant grade inflation. The new policy, which excludes A minuses and permits four additional As per course above the 20 percent cap, won support from roughly 70 percent of Harvard’s faculty, the university announced Wednesday. Faculty also approved a secondary proposal to replace standardized gGrade pPoint aAverages with average percentile rankings for internal awards and honors.The policies will take effect at the start of the 2027 academic year and will be reviewed after three years.“This is a consequential vote,” Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, Amanda Claybaugh, stated. “It will, I believe, strengthen the academic culture of Harvard; it will also, I hope, encourage other institutions to confront similar questions with the same level of rigor and courage.”The measure follows a bombshell report released last October that laid bare the scale of grade inflation at the Ivy League school. The report found that the share of A grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates had climbed to 60 percent, up from 40 percent a decade ago and less than 25 percent two decades prior.Ms. Claybaugh, who authored the report, concluded that the problem had grown so severe that Harvard’s grading was no longer performing “its primary functions” and was “undermining” the university’s academic mission. “Our grading is too compressed and too inflated, as nearly all faculty recognize; it is also too inconsistent, as students have observed,” the report stated. The inflation report alone was enough to trigger uproar from the university’s students, some of whom voiced their discontent in an article for the student-run paper, the Crimson. The piece drew on interviews with approximately 20 Harvard students who collectively argued that the report “misrepresented their academic experience” and that “stricter grading could heighten stress without improving learning.”“The whole entire day, I was crying,” one freshman shared. “I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.” She added that the report’s findings “just felt soul-crushing.”A student government poll from February 2025 showed that 85 percent of students opposed a cap on A grades. Prominent faculty, meanwhile, are welcoming the result. Psychology professor Steven Pinker praised the new policy as “a big step in combatting the grade inflation that has been dumbing down our courses, conveying the wrong message to students, and making universities a national laughingstock,” he wrote on X.

Harvard Faculty Vote to Cap A Grades Despite Strong Student Opposition

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