Restoring Honor to Diplomas

With over 90 percent of Harvard undergraduates receiving honors diplomas 2001, there is a clear need to tighten the College’s honors requirements. The Faculty Council took a step in that direction two weeks ago, making a bold recommendation to change the way Harvard awards honors. Its plan would limit honors to 60 percent of students based solely on grade point average after each department recommends honors for its concentrators.

The Faculty Council’s plan is aimed at treating the symptoms of grade inflation, not its causes. Raising the minimum grade point average for general cum laude diplomas is an appropriate move to make honors more meaningful. But this proposal could have the unintended consequence of encouraging departments to inflate their grades, in addition to denying honors to hundreds of deserving seniors each year.

Under the Faculty Council’s proposal, once students are recommended by their department for honors, they will be judged only on the basis of grade point average against all other undergraduates. Since departments would want as many of their concentrators as possible to receive honors, and since students take approximately half of their courses in their concentration department, departments would have an incentive to inflate their grades. As a result, though this plan was intended to fight grade inflation at the same time as reducing honors, it might actually hamper the College’s efforts to counter grade inflation.

In addition, the council’s proposal would subject an academically diverse student body to arbitrary GPA standards and quotas. Grade point average should be no more than one factor among many in deciding who receives honors; senior theses and equivalent projects should be the most important aspect of a student’s academic career. These projects mark the culmination of an entire undergraduate experience. Success in these initiatives shows the progression of a student’s learning and expertise in a field and therefore, in all but exceptional cases, shows that a student deserves honors regardless of GPA. This is especially beneficial for students who come from less priviledged secondary schools; senior theses allow these students to catch up to those who came to Harvard more prepared.

If it truly wants to make honors more selective, the Faculty must rely on departments to enforce higher standards—with increased oversight from the Educational Policy Committee and College administrators. Individual departments, not an arbitrary GPA standard, know best which students should receive honors.

At the same time, in order to receive honors, more stringent requirements and higher grading standards should be instituted in all departments for thesis level work. But all students who successfully write a quality thesis should receive honors, not just those with top GPAs. These students have satisfied the honors requirements for their departments, and they therefore deserve honors diplomas. As the Faculty Council’s report says, the Faculty has “historically assumed that honors are something of which all of our students are capable and to which all of them should aspire. We have tended, therefore, to differentiate among students more by the level of honors awarded than by the award of honors per se.” This view ought not to be hastily abandoned in favor of an arbitrary quota on honors; all students who truly excel should receive honors diplomas.

Aside from the problems of the proposal itself, the council should have recommended that this take effect for the Class of 2007. It is unfair to change honors requirements for first-years and those who just chose Harvard this spring; such information could affect the decision of whether to come to Harvard, what concentration to choose and what classes to take. And of course, any quota placed on honors is sure to increase competitiveness among students; the loss of camaraderie would be a detriment to the writing experience.

Honors should be a mark of distinction for all Harvard graduates who have excelled academically. Impulsive and imprudent changes to the system will only harm students who have worked too hard to be simply cut off by a quota.

Dissent: A Dishonorable Solution

Honors are meant to distinguish between those students who are merely good and those who consistently have done work of the highest quality. The Staff’s tepid criticism of the Faculty’s proposal does not grasp the central purpose of honors and allows far too many students to earn them. Unlike grades, which can measure work on an absolute scale, honors are by necessity comparative. Although it is difficult to make comparisons between those who concentrate in history and literature and those who study physics, the Faculty continues to abdicate its responsibility for separating out the best students.

Under the Staff’s proposal, those not receiving honors could more accurately be said to be dishonored. To make honors honorable again, the Faculty should cap honors at a much lower level. If, say, only 10 percent of graduating seniors received honors, such distinction would only be awarded to those truly academically honorable students who had distinguished themselves by the highest academic standards of their peers. Inflation of honors is banal and indefensible. Harvard should at last take some real steps to solve a problem of its own making.

—Jonathan H. Esensten ’04 and Anthony S. A. Freinberg ’04