Harvard imposes cap on ‘A’ grades, progressive educators differ on road forward

Starting in the fall of 2027, Harvard professors will be prohibited from awarding “A” grades to more than 20% of the students in a course—plus an additional four students. Harvard is enacting this policy following months of debate as part of an effort to curb a phenomenon known as grade inflation.

The term “grade inflation” refers to the perceived devaluation of high letter grades over time due to their being offered more readily to students. This trend has been observed in universities around the United States for years, and Harvard has not been spared; according to a proposal from the Harvard Office of Undergraduate Education, the amount of “A” grades assigned to students has steadily increased from 35% of all grades in 2012 to 66% in 2025. 

Grade inflation happens for a few reasons. Firstly, students tend to prefer classes taught by instructors known for giving higher grades. Grades are an overwhelming decider of whether a student will graduate and find a job with a livable paycheck, so it’s clear why students gravitate towards classes with more forgiving grading schemes. If an instructor wants to keep their job, they need students to take their classes, so they’re incentivized to grade more leniently to attract students. Secondly, university administrators need to maintain enrollment at their universities and demonstrate student success to justify increasing tuition costs, so administrators encourage instructors to assign higher grades that will keep students from dropping. 

When a year of college costs a typical student nearly $40,000, a single non-passing grade that requires a student to retake a class can be a death knell, as a retake extends a student’s time in school, adding unforeseen additional expense.

While inadvertently pushed for by both students and administrators, grade inflation can be seen as a problem for a university, which is why Harvard is interested in quelling it. 

To quote the original proposal for Harvard’s new grade-capping policy:

“Grades as a measure of comparison are used for purposes both internal to the university—in determining honors, awards, fellowships, and the like—and externally—by potential employers, graduate admissions officers, and others with a legitimate interest in comparing student performance.”

When grades are used to compare students, grade inflation is problematic because it makes it more difficult to distinguish students by GPA, since more students receive the same grades. Many faculty at Harvard see the new grading cap as a way to restore meaning to student transcripts and reward students for impressive academic performance. In this vein, the proposal further suggests adding a “satisfactory +” grade to the few courses where students would traditionally only be marked either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” The “satisfactory +” policy proposal was voted down by faculty, so satisfactory/unsatisfactory graded courses will remain for students as respites from being ranked against their peers.

The recent decision to cap grades traces back to a report prepared by the Harvard Dean of Undergraduate Education, which explains that faculty have been concerned about the inflation of grades for many decades, while students are generally unbothered by the trend. 

The report states that although the majority of students feel indifferent towards grade inflation, a few surveyed students express that they feel unfulfilled by pursuing a high GPA due to how easy it is to achieve under grade inflation. Some of these students apparently have turned to extracurricular activities to experience feelings of achievement and to distinguish themselves from their classmates. This redirection of attention is interpreted in the report as an indication that students are not sufficiently focused on their coursework, despite the same report finding that students seem to be spending as much time on coursework as ever. 

Not everyone holds the view that grades should be used to compare students and provide distinctions, though: the 201 Harvard faculty members who voted against the grading cap certainly challenge this view, as do the 85% of polled Harvard undergraduates who opposed the policy.

Restricting the number of “A” grades that instructors are allowed to offer forces all faculty to grade their students on a curve, that is, grading students against one another’s achievements rather than against a unified benchmark of success, a practice which has been heavily criticized by researchers of teaching and learning. Recent studies on grading have pointed to the detrimental impacts of traditional grading schemes on students’ mental health and intellectual growth, resulting from students becoming invested in achieving high grades over intellectual growth and seeing their peers as competition rather than collaborators. With this research in mind, progressive educators have gone so far as to pioneer grading practices which forgo traditional letter grades altogether—”proficiency-based grading” and “ungrading” being notable examples of such alternative grading practices. These alternative grading practices, which downplay student distinction, have shown substantial promise in improving student learning and well-being. 

Research seems to indicate that if Harvard’s primary concern was ensuring the fullest possible learning experiences for their students, it should have resolved the issue of grade inflation by adopting a policy that encouraged distinguishing students less, rather than more. It seems, though, that at Harvard University, distinguishing students is more important than promoting their learning, as the grade-capping policy was passed by a faculty vote. This decision is perhaps unsurprising, given that it is neither learning nor ability that helps students find employment after graduation, but distinction.

Not all hope is lost for those who oppose curved grading at Harvard, however. 

Back in the early 2000s, a different Ivy League school noticed a similar upward trend in the percentage of students that they were awarding “A” grades to and similarly decided to do something about it. In April 2004, Princeton University adopted a soft target to award “A”-range grades to no more than 35% of coursework; a policy more lenient than Harvard’s today in multiple respects. In 2013, nearly ten years after the introduction of the policy, a committee formed by the university reviewed the policy and recommended the following:

“Remove the numerical targets from the grading policy. Such targets are too often misinterpreted as quotas. They add a large element of stress to students’ lives, making them feel as though they are competing for a limited resource of A grades.”

The review explains that the policy failed to achieve its outlined goals, importantly noting that the increase in the levels of distinction between students didn’t impact their hireability in a noticeable way. It emphasizes that faculty should focus on the quality of feedback they are providing students rather than the grades they are distributing; a conclusion that resembles the findings of education researchers who promote alternative grading practices.

In 2014, exactly ten years after instituting its own grade cap policy, Princeton University revoked it.

Harvard University has started down the same road that Princeton did in 2004. If they continue down this particular road, it seems the faculty and students who oppose grade-capping will one day get their way. It just might take ten years.

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