Recenter Rigor, Not the Curve

Dr. Amanda Claybaugh correctly diagnosed the College with a serious case of grade inflation. Unfortunately, in its search for a cure, Harvard has missed the mark.

On February 6th, a faculty committee released a 19-page proposal on grading policy, recommending a 20 percent cap on the proportion of students awarded A grades per class, with an extra four A’s permitted to account for smaller courses. The committee also endorsed the use of an “average percentile rank” determined by raw scores, instead of GPA, to calculate internal honors.

When it comes to fixing our failing grading system, this proposed cap falls flat: The point of tackling grade inflation isn’t to reshape the curve, it’s to restore rigor to the classroom. Harvard ought to do so by collaborating with individual departments to establish a common understanding of grading that accommodates the idiosyncrasies of each discipline.

Grade inflation only poses a problem to the extent that some students receive A’s that they did not earn. Since 2012, the number of A grades awarded across the College has risen from 35 to 66 percent. Moreover, the number of Sophia Freund Prize recipients — an award meant to go to the senior with the highest GPA — has grown exponentially, from two in the 2011-12 academic year to 55 last year.

The proposal’s fundamental flaw, however, is expecting that an academic institution as pedagogically diverse as Harvard could somehow inspire academic vocation with a tool as crude as a quota.

The proposal sets its sight on making A’s confer “extraordinary distinction,” as per the definition found in the Student Handbook. But as to what said distinction really means, or why we should have it, the committee coughs up little answer — a rubric is not a rationale.

Certainly, 20 percent plus four can’t work for courses as different as, say, English 10: “Literature Today” and LIFESCI 1A: “An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences.” Determining who has exhibited “extraordinary” performance is an alien task when comparing a humanities course, where the subject of grading is often students’s subjective interpretation of material, to the blunt numbers that govern most STEM courses.

The only Harvard where one grading metric would be sufficient is one where all students take the same classes.

The proposed cap will hinder Harvard’s attempts to recenter academics by placing disproportionate emphasis on how students perform in relation to their peers. Within a rigorous, mastery-based grading scheme, students are encouraged to collaborate in pursuit of producing exceptional work worthy of an A. But when that opportunity becomes artificially limited, there arises an incentive to close ranks as students compete for a finite supply of A’s.

Consider Princeton, which adopted a similar policy on grading in 2004. Our New Jersey peers used to heavily encourage limiting A-range grades to 35 percent within each department. But this policy was dropped in 2014 due largely to the poor psychological environment it fostered, amid abysmal approval rates by both students and faculty.

Princeton’s experience suggests that even the perception of a cap harms the collective pursuit of learning — and it’s not enough to design “collaboration-friendly assignments” to fix the problem, as Harvard’s committee suggests.

Instead of comparative markers feeding competition on campus, grades should form an incentive structure to push as many students as possible to achieve the highest bar of mastery.

The way to do this is by intensifying rigor in the classroom. Harvard should develop and implement practical, stable understandings of mastery and distinction on the department level. Students, too, have a role in this process — communicating with faculty to develop shared theories of the A.

Naturally, this would be an environment with fewer A grades, but more importantly, it would be one that excels in cultivating learning. Grades would serve as feedback to students on their performance, rather than an indicator that their peers crowded up the top marks.

Like ripping off any band-aid, the process of decompressing grades will be uncomfortable. Our campus has become quite attached to our high marks, and the culture of perfectionism that has developed around grade inflation will have to adjust.

We simply ask that if recentering academics is the goal, let the solution begin in our classrooms — not on our transcripts.

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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