After Mixed Results Elsewhere, Faculty at Peer Schools Caution Harvard on Rigid A-Grade Cap

Faculty leaders at peer institutions that have already confronted grade inflation said Harvard is right to take the problem seriously — but warned that a rigid cap on A grades risks running into problems other schools have faced.

The Crimson spoke with faculty and administrators who have helped shape grading policy dialogue and recommendations at Princeton, Wellesley, Brown, Swarthmore, Cornell, University of California Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Across institutions, they described a shared concern that grades have become compressed at the top, weakening their role as meaningful feedback.

But many said hard caps, particularly if applied course by course, could heighten competition, distort classroom incentives, or prove difficult to sustain.

Multiple of those faculty were directly involved in Princeton’s now-abandoned effort to rein in grades. In the mid-2000s, Princeton adopted guidelines aimed at limiting the share of A-range grades across departments. The policy stopped short of a formal cap but was widely perceived by students as punitive.

In 2014, a faculty committee charged with reviewing the policy recommended scrapping the decade-old guidelines, citing student surveys that showed heightened anxiety and a growing sense of competition.

“In the end, the reasons Princeton ended up revising that policy in 2014 revolved mainly around negative side effects: increasing student anxiety about grades, and contributing to a ‘culture of competition’ on campus,” Clarence W. Rowley, the committee’s chair, wrote in an email to The Crimson.

Henry S. Farber, an emeritus economics professor who served on the committee, said Harvard’s proposal could face the same reaction.

“I think it has the potential to play out in the same way it did at Princeton with the students at Harvard being dissatisfied because they might feel that they’re at some competitive disadvantage with students from other universities who have grades that are less constrained,” Farber said.

The Princeton review found little evidence that the policy harmed postgraduate outcomes. Still, Farber said, student dissatisfaction proved decisive.

Similar dynamics played out at Wellesley College, where courses with more than 10 students were required from 2004 to 2019 to maintain an average no higher than a B+. Wellesley professor Akila Weerapana, who co-authored a paper on the policy, said it was rescinded in part because students viewed it as unfair.

“I honestly don’t think that the 20 percent policy will work,” Weerapana said of Harvard’s proposal. “I think it will make students feel more aggrieved.”

Weerapana said any effort to curb grade inflation must be paired with a shift in how students understand grades.

“We really have to both go back to say, ‘Look, A’s are rare. You should be proud of getting an A, but much more importantly, it’s okay not to get that A,’” Weerapana said.

A Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson referred The Crimson to the faculty committee’s report, which pushed back on comparisons to the policies at Princeton and Wellesley and argued that its proposal was sufficiently distinct.

Princeton’s cap applied across departments rather than within individual courses, the committee noted, while Wellesley’s policy targeted average course grades rather than A’s specifically — flaws it said Harvard’s course-level cap on A grades would avoid.

At Brown University, where there is no college-wide grading cap, the economics department adopted a softer approach.

When Robert Serrano served as department chair, faculty agreed in 2013 to nonbinding guidelines that varied by course level — recommending few A’s in introductory courses and allowing more flexibility in advanced seminars.

“I’m an economics professor, so usually economists don’t have a good reaction to strong enforcement rules,” Serrano said. “Why do you want to force people to do something? I mean, maybe you can be a little bit more gentle.”

Serrano also pointed to the gap between the proposed 20 percent cap and Harvard’s current grading distribution, which favors higher grades. A grades still account for more than half of all grades awarded, despite a nearly seven percentage point drop from spring 2025 to the fall semester.

“It sounds like a draconian change, no?” Serrano said.

Serrano said that at Brown, simply naming nonbinding numerical benchmarks helped shift norms without provoking resistance.

“Once you mention a number, and that number is out there for everybody to think about, then, I think, people probably are more receptive to follow that advice,” he said.

Faculty at other institutions warned that Harvard’s proposed course-by-course cap could distort classroom dynamics, particularly in small, advanced, or skills-based courses.

At Swarthmore College, economics professor Mark Kuperberg — who said he previously served on the school’s Council on Educational Policy — compared grading caps to price controls.

“I view grades as the analog of prices,” Kuperberg said. “They convey information and they aid in the allocation of resources.”

But, he added, imposing a hard cap would blunt that signal.

“A lot of classes are going to be right at the cap and and right under the cap — there’s going to be a lot of A minuses.”

Michael Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University, warned that a strict cap could undermine collaboration, particularly in laboratory and engineering courses.

“As soon as somebody says that I can only give this many A’s, then it’s a competition among the students,” Thompson said. “I’m going to not help my classmate because it may diminish my ability. And that’s a really unfortunate outcome.”

At the University of Chicago, where no formal grading cap has been adopted, classics professor Clifford Ando — who served for 12 years in an elected role on the school’s Faculty Senate — said faculty have closely followed grading debates at Harvard and Princeton but remain wary of institutional mandates.

“An issue that faculty at the University of Chicago care particularly strongly about, for reasons I’d be happy to discuss, is that any university policy on grade distribution would be an infringement on the autonomy of the instructors in the classroom,” Ando said, adding that faculty also worry about disadvantaging students if peer institutions do not adopt similar policies.

Farber said Princeton’s experience suggests that unilateral and sweeping reform from Harvard alone may be difficult to sustain.

“The lesson to take away from what happened at Princeton is that other schools didn't follow suit,” Farber said. “These kinds of proposals to rein in great inflation would be more effective if schools together did this.”

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.