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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I truly do not understand the point of this. It’s artificial. If students earn As, they should get As. If you think too many students are getting As because the material is too easy, then you should adjust the coursework to be harder.

But if you’re teaching what you’re supposed to teach, and the students are mastering it and getting As, why is this a problem? [/quote]

Exactly this. I am a college professor and I think this kind of artificial cap is the stupidest thing ever. Not to mention that that instead of creating a collaborative environment among students it will just create a cut-throat setting with everyone vying for those As. I just finished grading my students' final projects (in humanities) and honestly the vast majority of them were excellent, smart and creative . I cannot imagine artificially capping the number of As.[/quote]

Harvard knows most of the kids are not A material…. In the past, any top university would have about 10-20 % of students who would get As. It is absurd to think that a majority of the class would/could get As on their own merit .. we never saw this in the past.

[/quote]

What's your evidence for that statement? There's a lot of smart kids at Harvard.   FWIW, The classes at my Ivy league undergrad were orders of magnitude harder than the classes I took at my state university as a high school student to accelerate and then in the summer to meet certain requirements so I could study abroad.    Some of them were less difficult than my AP classes, but many of my fellow students were really struggling.[/quote]

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