As if faculty college students didn’t have sufficient to fret about, now undergrads at Harvard College may even see their A grades go up in smoke.
With over 60% of Harvard students getting A’s within the mid-2025 educational 12 months, school are presently weighing a proposal that may cap that to not more than 20% of the category, plus 4 college students. (A more detailed breakdown: 66% of undergraduates earned A’s, and 84% earned an A or A-minus within the 2024–25 educational 12 months.)
“The Scholar Handbook acknowledges an A grade as one reserved for work of ‘extraordinary distinction.’ We advocate returning to this definition,” the February 2026 proposal reads. “Whereas any modifications to grading insurance policies could increase considerations about fostering a aggressive tradition, we consider that these suggestions take important steps in the direction of the School’s purpose to re-center lecturers, restoring confidence within the School’s grading system, and higher aligning incentives with pedagogical targets.”
Only for context, lower than half of the Ivy’s scholar physique earned an A again in 2006. Additionally, because the administration clamped down on grade inflation in the course of the fall 2025 semester, the quantity fell to 53%.
“It’s sort of nutty,” Steven Levitsky, a Latin American research professor at Harvard, told Inside Greater Ed. “We’ve utterly erased the excellence between an A and A-minus,” he stated, including that the proposal is the “least dangerous resolution.”
College are voting on the measure this week, with outcomes due subsequent Wednesday, Could 20. It’s unclear whether or not it’ll go, as college students—already coping with a weak job market and skyrocketing tuition costs (now surpassing $80,000)—are stated to be furious, with some 85% opposing the cap, per the Harvard Crimson.
Grade inflation isn’t something new
In fact, grade inflation at Harvard, and different U.S. schools, isn’t something new. It may be traced back to the Vietnam War, when professors used it to guard college students from being drafted.
Extra lately, from 1990-2020, grade level averages (GPAs) at four-year schools elevated more than 16%, based on a put up by the U.S. Department of Education. It cited college students’ “client demand” for increased grades, and the ranking of professors, in driving the pattern.
“It’s true that grades at all times appear to be rising [at Harvard] . . . and has turn into excessive in recent times,” says a 2025 report about grading tendencies at Harvard from Dean of Undergraduate Schooling Amanda Claybaugh. “A sluggish rise within the early 2010s, steady with longstanding tendencies, adopted by a extra fast rise within the late 2010s, then an extra spike in the course of the 12 months of distant instruction and a flattening out after that.”
As college students await a call, one factor to notice: Latest makes an attempt at Princeton College and Wellesley School to rein in runaway grade inflation failed, Bloomberg reported.
