How do you spell ‘Harvard’? With an endless supply of A’s

A recent internal Harvard report found that more than 60% of grades given to undergraduates in the 2024-25 academic year were A’s—up from about 25% two decades ago. The median grade-point average at graduation, which was 3.29 in 1985, is now 3.83. Since 2016 the median GPA at Harvard has been an A, even though the number of hours that students say they spend studying has remained relatively unchanged for close to 20 years.

It’s possible that these outcomes stem from Harvard admitting smarter and more diligent applicants. But Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh, who authored the 25-page report, found that rampant grade inflation provides a more credible explanation. She cited an evaluation system that fails to perform “key functions" and a need to “restore the integrity of our grading." The report also noted that the problem of skyrocketing grades is an open secret on campus.

“Nearly all faculty expressed serious concern," Ms. Claybaugh wrote in the report. “They perceive there to be a misalignment between the grades awarded and the quality of student work." More students are opting for less-rigorous courses to leave time for extracurricular activities. They’d rather be coddled than challenged, and Harvard has accommodated them with a lenient grading system that effectively makes no distinction between students who have mastered the material and those who haven’t.

Predictably, Harvard students were none too pleased with these findings. One person described the report as “soul-crushing," according to the Harvard Crimson. Another argued that stricter academic standards would be a threat to students’ mental health. Others insisted that grading was already too harsh. “I can’t reach my maximum level of enjoyment just learning the material because I’m so anxious about the midterm, so anxious about the papers, and because I know it’s so harshly graded," one freshman explained. “If that standard is raised even more, it’s unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes."

Ms. Claybaugh deserves credit for her frank assessment, but the problem isn’t limited to Harvard. A 2023 report from Yale found that nearly 80% of grades given to its undergraduates were A’s or A-minuses. Lighter grading standards during the pandemic didn’t help matters, but the trend predates Covid and isn’t confined to our prestige institutions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between 1990 and 2020, the median college GPA rose by 21.5%. The largest increase (17%) came at public four-year institutions, not Ivy League schools.

The dilution of standards is no less a concern in graduate schools, where worry about racial and ethnic balance in outcomes has become more important than competency. Step 1 of the three-part licensure exam given to medical students to measure their basic grasp of anatomy, biology and other science used to be graded using a numerical score. In 2019 the medical groups who oversee the exam voted to change the grading of Step 1 to pass/fail.

“The solution to the fact that white students score better on the exam was to eliminate reporting scores," wrote Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. “This makes about as much sense as Major League Baseball eliminating batting averages to ensure that no ethnic cohort outperforms the others."

Harvard is weighing several proposals to address grade inflation. One would limit the number of A-plus grades awarded in each course. Another would require instructors to include the median grade in each class on the student’s transcript. Both would be steps in the right direction, but the impact would almost certainly be marginal.

The more fundamental problem is that colleges are admitting too many students who don’t belong in college. Policymakers believe that a four-year college degree is the optimal choice for almost every high school graduate. They play down the worth of alternatives, such as community college or learning a skilled trade. Like the student-debt problem, grade inflation is a function of far too many young people with little to gain from four more years in a classroom being tempted to attend college anyway.

Because colleges have lowered admissions standards to take advantage of tuition subsidies and admit as many students as possible, they have a strong incentive to lower standards for grading and for graduation. The better way to address grade inflation would be to privatize student lending and require colleges to pay some portion of student loans for borrowers who default.

If we want schools to exercise more discretion in admitting students and maintain high academic standards, give them more skin in the game.