Learning Is Not a Zero-Sum Game

What’s in a grade?

Grades are tools to promote learning. Yet the 20 percent cap on A grades proposed by a Harvard faculty committee seems to ignore that goal entirely.

The proposal attempts to address Harvard’s grade inflation epidemic, but its costs far outweigh any benefits. A stringent, uniform cap on A’s will punish students who surround themselves with high-achieving peers, unfairly impact certain classes and concentrations, and harm Harvard’s collaborative culture. The four additional A’s allotted per class do little to prevent that outcome. At the end of the day, Harvard’s learning community — and the students within it — will suffer.

As my colleagues on the Editorial Board and I have written, grades should reflect mastery — and Harvard’s grading report from last October agrees. But it is foolish to think that a uniform 20 percent of students across all classes demonstrate mastery. On its own, a particular fraction of students receiving A’s is neither good nor bad: After all, a class that gives out 50 percent A’s is not inherently less rigorous, just as a class with harsher grading is not necessarily a more rewarding learning experience.

In fact, I would wager that some of my most intellectually challenging, high-commitment classes have been the ones that gave out the most A’s. A class like Mathematics 55A: “Studies in Algebra and Group Theory” — which attracts top math students and can demand 20 hours of work a week — almost certainly has more students master the material than the average class. This proposal reflects an unsettling ignorance of such nuance.

The faculty committee tried in vain to address this issue.

For example, they propose an arbitrary “20%+4” cap on A grades, whereby courses are allotted A’s for at most 20 percent of enrollment, plus four more. So a small seminar with 10 students can give out six A’s, while a class with 100 students can only give out 24. This very crudely addresses small seminars — both in the humanities and beyond — that are largely composed of high-achieving students. But it does nothing for larger STEM classes that also attract top students.

The moral of the story is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to grade inflation. Different departments — and indeed, different classes within each department — have likely experienced grade inflation at different rates, for different reasons, and sometimes not at all.

Last year, the Math Department moved towards in-person exams — a better check that students truly understand course content than simply challenging problem sets and take-home finals. Many of my fellow Math concentrators would agree that this is exactly the kind of “anti-grade-inflation” adjustment in pedagogy that uses grades as an incentive to promote better learning.

If the administration is going to address grade inflation, it should work with each department to see where specific issues lie and implement individualized solutions. Instead, the current proposal simply punishes advanced students who gravitate towards advanced courses. Nothing could be further from Harvard’s goal to “recenter academics.”

What’s more, the proposal displays a frustrating ignorance of Harvard’s academic culture. In many of my classes, it is not hard to look around, count my classmates and close friends, and quickly realize there would be more qualified, hardworking peers than A’s to go around. If learning becomes a zero-sum game, will we pick up the phone when it’s time to study together or collaborate on a problem set?

When done right, learning is a communal experience: A good course is a community that strives to help as many students as possible reach the high bar of mastery. I’ve found that many of my friends and classmates chose Harvard precisely because it does this kind of learning so well. Yes, many classes have been touched by a grade inflation epidemic. And yes, grade inflation is partially due to a collective action problem. But burning Harvard’s academic culture on the altar of arbitrary grade distributions is foolhardy.

Princeton University tried a similar cap on A grades in 2004 — but walked back the policy in 2014, largely due to administration-nurtured competition destroying the school’s culture. According to a faculty committee’s report, one Princeton student lamented that “even good friends of mine would refuse to explain simple concepts that I might have not understood in class for fear that I would do better than them.” As an alternative, the Princeton committee proposed department-level, centrally-reviewed grading policies.

Harvard should take that advice to heart — and learn from Princeton’s mistake.

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with Harvard giving out fewer A’s by raising the bar for mastery. Grades should be earned. But a strict cap is a blunt instrument that hinders advanced classes and stifles learning. After all, focusing on the percentage of students who receive A’s misses the point: A grade distribution is not an end in and of itself. Any grading scheme should incentivize learning — not hurt it.

Some of my most cherished memories from Harvard are of my life’s hardest and most rewarding intellectual experiences: spending hours at a chalkboard with my closest friends, working on (and occasionally crashing out over) a particularly challenging problem set.

Harvard doesn’t grade perfectly — but it often does learning right. I hope that the faculty subcommittee on grading won’t take it all away.

Rohan Nambiar ’27, an Associate Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Mathematics and Economics in Leverett House.