Harvard faculty vote to limit A grades to no more than 20% of the class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students at Harvard are no smarter than they were in the 90's, and back then the average GPA was below 3.5.

Standards have gotten softer. There should be corrective measures to fix this issue. However, I do fear that lowering GPAs will hurt Harvard students seeking medical and law school admissions.

To be fair, they are absolutely smarter than they were in the 1990s. The kids are just smarter these days. More accomplished at a young age. I doubt half the class of 1992 would be able to get in these days.

Even assuming this is true … even if all Harvard students would be A students at UMass, that doesn’t mean they should all be A students at Harvard. Otherwise an A at Harvard doesn’t mean anything more than an A at UMass.

How could it even be true? Some Harvard admits need remedial meth classes. How is it possible that they would be A students automatically?

My friend admitted that her daughter really struggled with Calc at Harvard. It impacted her self esteem so much she took a semester off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Getting an A at Harvard should be much harder than getting one in a normal public high school. The notion that since these kids pranced through high school with a 4.0 UW GPA, we should expect that at Harvard is silly.

On average, harvard admits a kid from one out of 20 schools. These are not just random kids with a 4.0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anybody who does A work needs to get an A on their transcript. Doing otherwise means the grades are meaningless.

What grades others get has nothing to do with my grade.

Most people do not produce true A work. The average grade should be a 3.0. Only those very much above average should get a 4.0. Grade inflation is bad for everyone

What's your evidence for this? Why should an average grade be a 3.0. Clearly your education didn't teach you to make arguments coherently.

DP

62% of grades were As. Not As and A-minuses. As.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. How entitled you people could be!

Academically Harvard students are not better than Hopkins’ students. Most likely Hopkins’ students are smarter as a whole. Why Harvard can’t have a curved grading while this is the norm at Hopkins. This is wild.

Why can’t institutions be different? Why does everyone have to run the same model? And, especially, why does that model have to be what Johns Hopkins is doing? The last type of elite college id want to go to is 50% Asian, extremely competitive, everyone is premed, and there’s very little student culture.

+100, US higher education should not look like JHU

Again, that comment isn't even accurate. There has been a lot of grade inflation at Hopkins since I was a student in the 1990s. They ditched the grading curves from the 1990s and earlier long ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Princeton had grade deflation in the 2000s, and no one followed.

Princeton got rid of its grade deflation policy in 2014 because people realized it was doing more harm than good.

In math, physics, and engineering, problem sets are a huge part of how students learn the material. They’re long, difficult, and usually done in groups because that’s how people actually figure out complex ideas. Collaboration isn’t just allowed but encouraged. From my own engineering experience, if a large number of students genuinely understand the material and do well on difficult exams, it makes no sense to artificially lower some of their grades just to fit a quota.

Curbing grade inflation with a blanket policy isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

Absolutely, why punish students and have them work against each other for a limited amount of grades? It teaches them to go out in life and not collaborate. I would not send my child to such a school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/harvard-students-furious-over-plan-061700240.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAD1z6z1tIcGmU6fPqnH5QWV3uhzTpM1vKxuoDMfgIee8pKP5-5Jb2PVaqz2ABIctsxhvgX_k7FT1BF1tMxd7scdKqylNQ9MyzBHFXhXce8vi81WmCLoE2DHUFETMwEofazciWuf8_94YZ2pbZPSP7FJSzRoXpo3Jc13EklHRFRj-

The proposal under consideration would limit A grades in undergraduate courses to no more than 20% of the class plus four additional students. Roughly 60% of grades were an A in the academic year ending in mid-2025 at Harvard, more than double the rate in 2006. That fell to 53% in the fall semester after Harvard urged faculty to be more disciplined.

the Harvard vote has the potential to be a catalyst for wider changes. If one of the country’s best known and most prestigious universities declares grade inflation a problem, it could inspire other schools to do the same

A strict cap on A grades is especially harmful to STEM and engineering classes because these courses are often designed around objective problem-solving rather than subjective evaluation. In many STEM courses, it is entirely possible for a large portion of the class to genuinely earn an A by correctly solving problems and mastering the material. Artificially limiting A grades means students could be penalized even when they meet the standard for excellence.

This is different from many discussion, or writing-based classes, where grading can be more comparative and subjective. In STEM, there is often a clear right answer. If 40% of a calculus or engineering class demonstrates mastery, forcing half of them below an A makes grades less accurate, not more meaningful.
The policy would punish success in rigorous technical courses instead of reflecting actual understanding.

You are extremely wrong. STEM grades can be deflated by creating very difficult questions and not spoon feeding example problems throughout the quarter. The burden is on the faculty to create this and create different ones for each section and semester to stay ahead of the Chinese cheaters and frats collecting old tests. An additional mechanism to deflate is to grant no partial credit for any questions.

Humanities courses however evaluated subjectively. What happens in deflation is the papers are rank stacked. Ideally without bias but that is really impossible not to do as a human being. Bias isn’t just racial or gender but bias toward interest, style and other things not intended as part of the evaluation.

Plus, imagine telling a student their paper is excellent and shows mastery of the material, great insight and research skills, but they only got a 79 because almost all the papers were excellent, and a few other papers were marginally more excellent than hers.

[Anonymous]

Stop whining! Harvard is entitled to change its grading policy however it sees fit! If you don't like it, simply don't apply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop whining! Harvard is entitled to change its grading policy however it sees fit! If you don't like it, simply don't apply.

This comment was surprisingly pathetic and unnecessary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop whining! Harvard is entitled to change its grading policy however it sees fit! If you don't like it, simply don't apply.

When they reinstated the testing requirement, there was a lot of whining on DCUM too. Now almost no one seriously argues against Harvard's testing requirements anymore. Give it a year or two. Let Harvard do its thing. People will stop complaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anybody who does A work needs to get an A on their transcript. Doing otherwise means the grades are meaningless.

What grades others get has nothing to do with my grade.

Most people do not produce true A work. The average grade should be a 3.0. Only those very much above average should get a 4.0. Grade inflation is bad for everyone

It doesn't seem anyone on here thinks students who don't deserve C's should get A. So you're missing the point.

If most people do not produce A work (as you suggest), then don't give the damn A. And that doesn't matter if they are at Harvard or a T200 school. It should have nothing to do with quotas. I'd be fine with professors giving zero A's, or all A's, if that is what the students deserve.

But that's not what happens.

65% of all grades are As

[Anonymous]

I haven't read the whole thread. Has anybody mentioned that there are some examples of this elsewhere? The Government department at Georgetown, for example, caps As at 20%.

[Anonymous]

I feel for the young people there because I suspect it will make things more cut throat. Plus, you have a lot of perfectionists who probably put too much of their identity into As,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel for the young people there because I suspect it will make things more cut throat. Plus, you have a lot of perfectionists who probably put too much of their identity into As,

But then they likely do deserve an A, if they complete the assignment well. It seems odd to me that depending on who is your class (mostly perfectionists, mix of perfectionists and slackers...) you may/may not get an A. A person's work should be judged on its own merit.

[Anonymous]

Reality is professors have seen and reported on the weakening of standards and of the declining level of competency among the student body.

All while the administrators at America’s universities have plagiarized their way to the top and introduced more and more remedial courses.

Better to keep the coffers full. Universities are no longer interested in outcomes only monetary income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read the whole thread. Has anybody mentioned that there are some examples of this elsewhere? The Government department at Georgetown, for example, caps As at 20%.

What if 30% of students demonstrate absolute mastery of the material and assignments? Do they just give people Bs when they deserve As?