Mansfield Limits ‘A’ Tutorial Grades

Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. ’53, a major opponent of grade inflation, has many of his sophomore tutorial students worried this semester. Mansfield, who co-chairs the sophomore tutorial program this fall, recently advised all teaching fellows for government 97a that no more than one fifth of the students should receive a grade of A or A-.

The class is a requirement for all sophomore government concentrators—about 200 in total. Because of this, many students believe the unusual grading system is unfair.

“I don’t like the idea, because supposedly every other class at Harvard is grade-inflated, and this one isn’t,” said Victor A. S. Regal ’04. “It will appear that you’re doing worse in this class than any other.”

But Mansfield says it is a system that students will have to get used to.

“It’s a course that all sophomores take so it’s a chance to introduce justice across the board,” he says.

Associate Professor of Government Keith J. Bybee co-chairs the course, which is primarily run by the teaching fellows. “That actually was a policy that Professor Mansfield and Professor [Andrea] Campbell adopted last year for the teaching of sophomore tutorial,” Bybee said. “He asked that we carry it forward this year since I’m filling in for Professor Campbell, who is on leave.”

Professor Mansfield, who also teaches two political philosophy classes, government 1060 and government 1061, implemented a new grading policy for those classes last year, giving each student a “real” grade, and an “inflated”grade that was sent to the registrar.

Mansfield last year drew both attention and criticism for his attacks on Harvard’s 51 percent A and A- grade distribution.

“It doesn’t seem hard to me when 20 percent of students get the top two grades. I would consider that a considerable concession to grade inflation—in Gov 1060 it’s only 10 percent.”

Some have questioned why Mansfield inflates the grades for government 1060 and 1061 but not for Gov 97a.

“[Gov 1060] is my class, whereas government 97 is a course for the department, and I didn’t want to do for the whole department what is my individual choice for my own course,” Mansfield said.

But some students are concerned that a lower grade in government 97a would look bad on a transcript.

“Certain scholarships—anything you have to send your transcript to, it’ll make you look worse in gov 97 than you are,” said Regal.

Though Mansfield says only 20 percent of grades can be A or A-, both he and Bybee said that does not necessarily mean that there will be 20 percent each of B, C, D, and F.

“We don’t have rigid enforcement mechanisms, but that’s the nature of the course. We allow tutor autonomy to a certain extent,” Bybee said. “It’s about quality control…we try to make sure everybody is operating from the same playbook.”

Government 97a head teaching fellow Bryan D. Garsten could not be reached for comment yesterday.