A Vicious Spiral

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 has said that, over the last several decades, students have been receiving ever-higher grades for relatively the same level of work. While this is a clear-cut description of the College’s academic atmosphere, there are many diverse explanations for this trend. To isolate the real causes of grade inflation, it is necessary to examine which of these explanations are valid and which are mistaken.

Some have argued that grade inflation has not occurred at all, and that higher grades instead reflect a more talented student body as reflected by Harvard’s increasingly competitive admissions process. The Ivy League’s academic index for first-years, based on both their SATs and high school GPAs, has been rising. Students might also be producing better work because of the increasingly prevalent use of technology. Through the use of computers, and especially the Internet, students have more valuable educational resources at their fingertips than ever before.

If today’s students are more proficient, they should be receiving higher grades, with or without a more lenient grading policy. More As would then reflect achievement, not inflation. But while many say that students’ abilities have increased, aptitude alone cannot account for the astonishing percentage of Harvard students that receive As and A-minuses today, nor for the full-point jump in average GPA over the last 15 years. “Only a very small part of this is an increase in academic talent of the students,” as Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic Warren D. Goldfarb ’69 and numerous other faculty and administrators have conceded.

Others have suggested that small classes, which tend to have higher grades, are an important cause of grade inflation. But higher grades themselves do not necessarily indicate that grade inflation is worse in smaller classes than in large ones. While grade inflation certainly influences grades, the more intimate atmosphere and increased faculty-student interaction in smaller classes increases the quality of work that students produce. Students in small classes, which tend to be more advanced, are often more qualified and enthusiastic about the subject. Yet, because grades have been compressed, their marks still do not clearly reflect their performance. And even if small classes did inflate their grades more than other classes, they still would not comprise a large enough percentage of total grades to drive such a powerful trend, according to Lewis.

Since neither increasing student aptitude nor smaller classes appear to explain the stunning rise in grades, faculty members have turned to other explanations. Early last year, many at the College were angered when Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. ’53 publicly reasserted his racial theory of grade inflation. Mansfield argued that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “white professors stopped giving low or average grades to black students and, to justify or conceal it, stopped giving those grades to white students as well.” But in a Crimson op-ed last year, Lewis forcefully denied Mansfield’s claims. While acknowledging the existence of grade inflation, he discredited Mansfield’s accusations by indicating that black students did not appear in significant numbers on Harvard’s campus until 1970. Using statistical data, Lewis showed that the period from 1970 through 1985 was the only 15-year period in the past 80 years in which there was no increase in grades at Harvard.

Though Mansfield was proven wrong, there are several more reasonable explanations for why grades have increased. Former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Henry A. Rosovsky, among others, has postulated that the Vietnam War draft boards of the late 1960s had a significant influence. Faculty members were reluctant to give poor grades to male students because such grades could leave them subject to the gruesome carnage of Southeast Asia. Inflated grades became the moral equivalent of opposition to the war.

Rosovsky also cited the increased reliance on TFs as a reason for rising grades. TFs receive minimal training—some are even hired the day before classes begin—and they often have widely divergent views of what constitutes top quality work. Because of these amorphous standards, TFs are susceptible to students who, due to growing competition for employment or graduate school admissions, pressure them to give higher grades. Unfortunately, TFs acquiesce because there is no incentive for them to grade strictly. In fact, they are actually encouraged to grade more easily due to the well-documented correlation between high grades and high student evaluations—which can influence TFs’ professional careers, promotions and even pay.

All of these factors have combined to obscure the true standard of what an A should mean at Harvard—“work of extraordinary distinction,” according to the Handbook for Students.

Grade inflation has taken on a life of its own. As Government Department Chair Roderick MacFarquhar has said, “Some people may feel that everyone else is [inflating grades], and therefore they should too.” This vicious cycle gives students and faculty less accurate information, provides almost no distinction between real and inflated As and, most detrimentally, deprives students of the best opportunity to learn all they can at Harvard. The Faculty must confront its unavoidable responsibility to assure a more professional, direct and organized approach to issuing grades to undergraduates. While giving students meaningful feedback about their work, these grades must maintain the integrity of a Harvard A.