Fulfilling Our Responsibilities as Instructors

It’s generally much easier for a faculty member to hand out A’s to a significant majority of their students than to distinguish between them, especially when differentiating among students with whom they’ve developed a rapport.

I know this from personal experience. I also know that the recent faculty proposal to limit A grades must be adopted as a first step, if we as Harvard faculty are to fulfill our role in providing our students with meaningful feedback and opportunities for growth, as well as differentiate among them for internal and external opportunities alike.

When I joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor in July 2007, grade inflation and compression were underway, but A’s were not handed out quite as readily as they are today. I’d taken my last class at Harvard in spring 2000 (I earned my Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2006), and I remember well just how much work, mastery, and distinction it took to earn an A. I wanted to translate that rigor, and the rigor from my undergraduate days at Princeton, into my own teaching and assessing of my students.

But it quickly became clear that times were changing. By the 2012-2013 academic year, 62 percent of Harvard College grades were either A or A-minus, and by 2018-2019, 76 percent had reached that level. Today, it’s nearly 85 percent, even as in my own classes the quality and range of student work has remained relatively consistent. Spending time with student papers and projects, I could tell who had done work that indicated “a good comprehension of the course material” (B-range grades), who had done work of “excellent quality” that “indicates a full mastery of the subject” (A-minus), and who truly had done work of “extraordinary distinction” (A).

And yet, pressure to ignore differences in student academic work was immense, for both faculty and our teaching assistants and teaching fellows who do most of the grading in large courses. I knew that if I gave a student an A-minus or below, chances were good that the student would reach out to me, sometimes with the support of their resident dean, demanding a higher grade. These demands were particularly challenging for my TAs and TFs to deflect, fearing as they did that their future career depended on student happiness with grades. I became increasingly concerned with the strident tones used by some undergraduates, particularly toward my TAs and TFs, and with misguided claims that an A-minus grade in my class would prevent a student from attending medical school and receiving fellowships, or that giving a student an A-minus grade harmed that student’s mental health.

Strikingly, although competition across a range of extracurriculars remains taken for granted and in many cases is expected (e.g., not everyone who tries out for a team makes it onto the varsity roster; not everyone who auditions for a musical group is able to participate in that group), in the classroom, it seemed, many students and instructors believed competition unacceptable.

When it comes to academic distinction, competition is also inevitable. I’ve heard my colleagues say they don’t want to be the ones denying students the opportunity for awards, fellowships, and other opportunities by giving them an A-minus, much less a B+. I empathize. But as President of Harvard’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Society the last few years, upholding the guidelines of the national PBK organization, I can say with certainty that by giving a student an A who really deserves an A-minus, or a B+, we are in fact potentially denying a place in PBK to another student who is even more deserving of being elected.

So what can we as faculty do? First, award A’s only to those students who do work of “extraordinary distinction.” If we’re honest with ourselves, we generally know who these students are. And, with the exception of some small seminars, students who exhibit “extraordinary distinction” are unlikely even to be 20 percent of any given course.

Second, be clear with our TFs, and TAs that numerical evaluations don’t mean much to grant or hiring committees inside or outside campus. Written comments do. And if selection committees read that a TF, or TA was rigorous in their grading and required students to do work of high quality, they will admire that individual for upholding academic integrity. Furthermore, giving students A’s when they haven’t done work of “extraordinary distinction” or A-minuses when they’ve not indicated “full mastery” of the content denies them the honest feedback or support that would benefit them across their courses and beyond.

As the Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, I’m committed to working with instructors of every career stage to design rigorous assignments and examinations that lead to fair grades.

By recentering distinction, transparency, and fairness, as well as academic excellence, we can bring the classroom back to the center of Harvard College, as called for by last year’s Report of the Classroom Social Compact Committee. The new grading proposal enables us faculty to set our terms thoughtfully and deliberately, restoring grades as meaningful feedback, giving students tools to help them understand where they stand, where they can grow, and when they have achieved something truly exceptional.

Karen L. Thornber is the Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature, a professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Harvard College Professor. She is the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and President of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Iota of Massachusetts.