To Deflate Grades, Eliminate the Core

With all the talk of late about grade inflation, it seems worthwhile to investigate the possible origins of whatever grade inflation may exist at Harvard and what purpose it serves, if any. To be sure, if grade inflation exists, and I believe it does, it does a disservice to the undergraduate community. The fact remains that grade inflation devalues the efforts of those students who truly merit an "A" and gives those who do not deserve such a grade an inaccurate impression of the value of their work. All of this, though, has already been discussed and debated throughout this week.

What are the advantages of grade inflation? Apart from the gratitude that many students will feel towards the phenomenon when it comes time for interviews and applications, grade inflation serves to counteract the capricious and arbitrary nature of some of our larger classes here Harvard. As the staff editorials on this page in the past week have made abundantly clear, students resent the Core program. This resentment is not based on the desire to reduce our graduation requirements, but rather on a dissatisfaction with Core classes' large lecture format. The great advantage of replacing the Core program with a distribution requirement is that the latter would allow students to take smaller--or perhaps simply more focused--courses in which both the professors and the teaching fellows are enthusiastic about the material.

Unfortunately, in most Core classes no one--neither the professor, the teaching fellows or the students--have much interest in the class. The atmosphere in many Core offerings is not one of intellectual endeavor but rather one reminiscent of drivers' education classes. As a result, grading standards in Core classes tend to be arbitrary.

And here is where grade inflation truly does the Harvard undergraduate a great service. Unlike other classes, one's grade in a Core tends to be somewhat beyond the student's control. Grade inflation merely ensures that the result, however arbitrary, is at least not catastrophic to one's GPA. I can only imagine the hue and cry that would erupt if the current Core program were not subject to grade inflation. Receiving an arbitrary grade somewhere between a "B-" and an "A," (which, according to Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield, is where 90 percent of Harvard grades lie) is a lot more palatable than receiving an arbitrary grade that falls somewhere over the full spectrum of grades.

Of course, because of this grade inflation in Core classes, the phenomenon must spread to the other classes in the catalog as well. This diffusion of grade inflation is because most professors are loathe to effectively punish students for taking their classes by using tougher grading standards.

The solution, therefore, is to both do away with the Core program in favor of a distribution requirement and to de-emphasize larger departmental classes in favor of smaller offerings. Larger classes simply tend to be more arbitrary in their grading than the smaller classes at Harvard. In fact, there should be an emphasis on direct evaluation of student work by professors throughout one's undergraduate education here at Harvard. Through more contact with professors in smaller classes, Harvard undergraduates will be both more engaged in the intellectual project that is ongoing at this university and not require the distorting effects of grade inflation to make up for the arbitrariness of huge classes.

--Thomas M. Dougherty