We Hate to Admit It, But Dean Claybaugh is Right

After decades of grade inflation, an A for excellence has become an A for effort. The College’s new report on grade inflation, while imperfect, makes clear that much-needed change is on the horizon.

The current arrangement — with students working hard as ever and receiving minimal feedback while GPAs precipitously rise — benefits no one. Addressing the problem will require major changes, including ensuring grading functions as a true indicator of mastery, reconfiguring assignments to center learning over volume, and destroying perverse incentive loops. The College should seriously evaluate proposals before letting the arrow fly.

Nonetheless, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh’s report makes several stark realities apparent. First, it outlines the severity of grade inflation, as evidenced by the astonishing statistic that 60 percent of awarded grades are A’s. Second, it advances the argument that, among other functions, grading has failed to communicate proper information to students. Third, the report offers solutions spanning transcript updates to the introduction of the A+.

The result is a campus where nobody feels satisfied. Professors, fed up with students working just enough for an A instead of intellectual satisfaction, report waning classroom engagement. Too many classrooms now are lit with the glow of laptop screens rather than the spark of genuine intellectual curiosity.

As Claybaugh’s report hit student inboxes, many flocked to Sidechat, an anonymous social media application, to express their extreme disapproval at the prospect of grade deflation. First-year students likewise vocalized shock and horror, citing desires to invest in extracurriculars. Such positions often operate on a different premise of what grading ought to communicate. Who wants lower grades, after all?

But as much as we hate to admit it, grade inflation harms our academic experience. As the average grade increases, we commit hours to grunt work to vainly attempt to distinguish ourselves from our peers. We refrain from taking courses we otherwise would, believing that even one additional A- could spell doom for job and graduate school applications. Our professors, fed up with work both sides recognize as subpar, disengage from giving us feedback. We are overworked and underevaluated.

It is true that we might receive lower marks than we would wish in a world where the grade balloon pops. And yes, we may have to choose between a squeaky-clean transcript and being, say, an editor at The Crimson. But such tradeoffs are worth a world where a grade means what it should — a level of mastery of material.

Many are sure to be concerned about outcomes, too. But while grades have risen, Harvard admits are still a subset of our nation’s brightest. At the end of the day, lower GPAs will not exclude us from the well-trodden pathways that were just as apparent to students from a semi-recent past removed from the grade inflation problem. Plus, Princeton students seem to be faring just fine.

Two years ago, our Board did not consider grade inflation a serious problem, articulating that admitting smarter students over time would naturally beget higher average GPAs. We’ve since changed our views on the problem of grade inflation itself and the standard of an A.

Grades should measure mastery, and the ballooning grade point average is reflective of neither. As one faculty member tellingly remarked, an A represents “anything from outstanding work to reasonably satisfactory work.” Comments like these coupled with our own experiences cast immense doubt on the notion that 60 percent of student work meets the standard of “excellence.”

To that end, Harvard must adopt a data-driven approach to make grading fair and consistent across classes and departments. For a student who has mastered the material to receive the same grade as one who has not is unfair to both; one’s achievement is ignored, while the other is denied the chance to have a meaningful learning experience. On its own terms, distribution of grades is irrelevant. If every student genuinely masters the course material, then every student should receive an A.

Importantly, grading practices are symptomatic of a national shift away from academics that must be course-corrected rather than inherent flaws within Harvard students in particular. The pandemic, social media, and the rise of artificial intelligence have almost certainly worsened our attention spans and study habits. Still, Harvard can — and should — support students in light of these unfortunate realities. Strengthening introductory courses and expanding academic support are the first steps. Nonetheless, change can and should begin at Harvard.

Offering increased feedback and realistic grading schemes will allow Harvard to raise student expectations, which should center on demonstration of course material rather than a student’s ability to Google the answers to a Canvas quiz with frightful haste.

The issue of swollen GPAs at Harvard did not appear overnight. We cannot expect to fix it in the same timeframe either. The solutions in this report — and those that have yet to be proposed — should undergo serious scrutiny iteration before they are imposed. Can we truly be confident that measures that have individually failed at other intuitions will somehow work when applied in parallel? Harvard may be feeling the pressure, but reforming hastily could do more harm than good.

Harvard students should be here to learn — not get a 4.0. Based on the College’s recent efforts, it appears that dream may someday be achieved. For the time being, we’ll have to content with giving the administration an A. For effort, of course.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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