We Lead the Intellectual Vitality Initiative. Harvard Needs To Set Its Standards Higher.

Harvard has a peculiar gift for turning self-reflection into spectacle. The University’s latest act of introspection — a report on grade inflation — was meant to provide context for ongoing conversations about recentering academics. Instead it has taken campus by storm, but not for the reason you think.

The report and its rollout has sparked a much-needed reckoning with our differing conceptions of what our University is for. And students, faculty, and administrators are mutually implicated in determining the kind of college culture we will create.

The report said what we already knew: regardless of how much time they actually spend on coursework, students don’t derive a genuine sense of achievement from their academics. And for good reason: as GPAs have compressed at the top of the scale, A-range grades now routinely award work that faculty acknowledge falls well short of genuine excellence.

While the data are unsurprising, what is noteworthy is the College’s decision to articulate its concerns and proposed remedies directly to students. Rather than advancing quiet, procedural changes through the Educational Policy Committee, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh ushered in a new era of transparency from University Hall — one characterized by open communication with both the student body and the popular press.

We can’t laud this transparency enough. Students are more than capable of engaging with the reasoning behind administrative decisions, and it is long past time for the University to pull back the curtain. Transparency reveals that Harvard’s policies are not paternalistic exercises meant to outmaneuver or mislead students, but data-driven interventions shaped by thoughtful normative reflection. Explaining the rationale behind decisions fosters the kind of academic community Harvard ought to be — one grounded in shared facts and mutual trust.

The report’s most trenchant impact, though, lies in the demand for reflection it imposes on community members both individually and as a collective. First, there are the questions of basic integrity: are we really comfortable presenting transcripts to the outside world that are straightforwardly dishonest? More fundamentally, what do we believe to be the purpose of Harvard College? Is the College experience serving that mission?

College leaders have taken a welcome stand in this broader argument, declaring that their paramount goal is “to educate our students.” Yet that vision is far from universally embraced. Some students claim that activism is the “heartbeat” of the university, while others cite “engagement with extracurriculars” as the point of a Harvard education. In confronting the faculty’s or Dean Claybaugh’s vision — whether we find ourselves in favor or opposed — we are, as Hannah Arendt once urged, made “to think what we are doing” with our education.

University Hall’s insistence on academic seriousness is thus dramatizing the painful gap between Harvard’s espoused values and what has for many years been its lived reality. No wonder some first-years are defensive, anxious, and angry: for the past decade, the implicit bargain of admission was that undergrads would get to enjoy the prestige of the Harvard name — whether they worked hard or not. Now, the administration is challenging that premise, and arguing that learning, not social standing, is the point of a Harvard College education.

If they mean business, however, it’s also time to address the fact that the faculty and administration bear responsibility for a teaching culture that, in many corners, has atrophied. Faculty have failed to view the College’s teaching mission as, fundamentally, a collaborative enterprise, one in which instructors operate with a presumption that they should receive feedback from each other on all aspects of teaching.

There are signs of progress — the Bok Center’s initiative, led by Matthew Sohm, to train teaching fellows is one heartening example — but more needs to be done. First and foremost, faculty should take full ownership over grading, making sure that both their students and their TFs understand (and in the case of TFs, know how to apply) the distinction codified in our grading standards between “satisfactory,” “good,” and “excellent” performance.

That will require focused mentoring of TFs, especially since the criteria of excellence cannot be codified into a mechanically-applicable rubric, nor left to overextended graduate instructors to guess at. Finally, if Harvard is to adopt the grade of A+, it should never be awarded except under the judgment and mentorship of full-time, non-contingent instructors.

Sociologist Christopher Winship offers a compelling diagnosis of our present equilibrium: higher education has fallen into what he calls a “low–low contract”: faculty maintain low expectations for students’ effort, while students expect little of their professors in return. Escaping this cycle will require both sides to act. If we, as a community, hope to move from this “low–low” arrangement toward a “high–high” one — where students push themselves to learn and faculty invest deeply in teaching — then both will have to step up.

But we’ve perhaps put the cart before the horse: the grade inflation report presented only policy suggestions, not policy changes. It was an invitation to dialogue, not a declaration of fait accompli. If students are serious about objecting, they should argue why, in fact, the status quo is preferable to the changes proposed in the report.

The discomfort of the present transition may yet prove worthwhile if it sparks a reckoning of our collective project and where we are currently falling short. So yes, we’re fans of the report — not for its prescriptions, but for its provocation. It has forced Harvard, for the first time in a long while, to think out loud about what it’s doing. And that, finally, is something worth grading highly.

Jack P. Flanigan ’27, a Social Studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House, is a co-chair of the Student Advisory Board for the Intellectual Vitality Initiative. Edward “Ned” Hall is the Norman E. Vuilleumier Professor of Philosophy and that department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies, as well as the chair of the Faculty Advisory Board for the Intellectual Vitality Initiative. Ari F. Kohn ’26, a joint Social Studies and Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House, is co-chair of the Student Advisory Board for the Intellectual Vitality Initiative.