Harvard College's faculty prepares to vote on a grading reform that would cap the number of A grades awarded to students. Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh identified grade inflation and inconsistency as the core problems in a 2025 report, stating that "our grading is too compressed and too inflated, as nearly all faculty recognize; it is also too inconsistent, as students have observed."

The proposal addresses a well-documented trend at Harvard and other elite universities where A grades have become standard rather than exceptional. Grade compression, where most students cluster in the A and B range, obscures genuine differences in student performance and weakens the signal that transcripts send to employers and graduate programs.

Claybaugh's acknowledgment that "nearly all faculty recognize" the inflation problem suggests broad institutional awareness. The inconsistency students have flagged points to another issue: grading standards vary widely across departments and individual instructors, making it difficult for students to understand what their marks actually represent.

Harvard has grappled with this issue before. In 2004, the college adopted a 10-year limit on undergraduate grades but did not formally cap A distribution. The current proposal represents a more direct intervention. By limiting As, the university aims to restore meaning to letter grades and create clearer distinctions between excellent and merely good work.

The vote reflects a broader conversation in higher education about grade inflation's consequences. When most students earn As, those grades lose their value as indicators of mastery. Graduate schools and employers struggle to distinguish high performers from average ones. Students also face pressure to maintain perfect records, potentially pushing some toward easier courses rather than intellectual challenge.

Implementation details remain unclear, including whether the cap would apply universally across all departments or allow discipline-specific flexibility. Science and engineering courses often award fewer As than humanities courses, so any policy must account for these differences. The faculty vote will determine whether Harvard moves forward with