Faculty to Vote On Change to Grading Scale

A proposal to switch from a 15 to a 4.0 grading scale and drastically reduce the number of students who receive honors is likely to go to a vote before the Faculty by the end of the month.

Members of the Faculty Council—a committee of 18 faculty members who preview legislation before it goes before the full Faculty—said they had agreed last week on the proposal to change the grading scale.

But how to ensure the integrity of honors—the question that has occupied the Faculty all year—is still being debated.

“Faculty Council endorsed these ideas, but the legislation and the document to circulate to the Faculty are only now being drafted,” wrote Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82 in an e-mail.

One proposal for honors reform being considered is to put a cap on the number of students who receive honors.

Ninety-one percent of seniors graduated with honors last year.

According to Faculty members, some suggest limiting the number of students who receive honors to 50 percent.

But students on the Committee of Undergraduate Education (CUE) said they do not think this is a sound solution.

“They should change the standards, not the numbers,” said Rohit Chopra ’04, who is also chair of the Student Affairs Committee of the Undergraduate Council.

“This seems like an attempt at a quick fix,” he said.

Others said they worry that external pressure may be driving the Faculty.

“Harvard should think about the needs of its students and not its embarrassment to the outside world,” said Alexander B. Patterson ’04.

The Faculty Council met last week to discuss a report issued by the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) on how to combat grade inflation.

The report—which took months to draft before it was discussed by CUE last week—was based on departmental recommendations and general discussion among the Faculty.

But the Faculty Council did not endorse any of the EPC’s major recommendations.

“We were satisfied with the spirit but not the mechanism of the EPC report,” said Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris.

The EPC recommended that the grading scale be changed from 15 to eight points in order to eliminate the numerical gap between a B-plus and an A-minus and thus make professors feel less pressure to give A-range grades.

According to Harris, the Faculty Council endorsed the idea of eliminating the gap, but thought they might as well take the change one step further.

“We realized that there is a perfectly good scale already out there that everyone uses,” Harris said. “It is simple and elegant.”

Harris said if Harvard switched to the 4.0 scale, GPAs would no longer have to get converted when being reported to graduate schools and potential employers.

The Faculty Council also rejected the EPC’s recommendation that the percentage of A’s earned in a class be printed next to the student’s grade on his or her transcript.

The EPC said such a transcript would better communicate the meaning of Harvard grades to the outside world.

Students said they were pleased with the decision to reject that proposal.

“Such a system devalues student work and makes little sense,” Chopra said.

According to Pedersen, actual legislation addressing the Faculty Council’s proposals will be drafted early next week, allowing the full Faculty to vote upon changes that could go into effect as early as next year.

—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached at vascell@fas.harvard.edu.