Deming Says Ivy Deans Talked Budget Strains, Grading Reform, and Public Trust at Annual Conference

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming said the financial strain on elite universities dominated discussions at a gathering of Ivy League deans last weekend, where administrators traded notes on how to respond to leaner budgets, grade inflation, and a recent Yale report on eroding public trust in higher education.

Deming, who attended the annual conference of Ivy League deans at Yale, said the overall theme of the weekend was “how to deal with leaner budgetary times,” describing it as a challenge that “all universities are dealing with.”

His comments, made at an open forum Thursday, came as Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences prepares to launch a sweeping administrative overhaul this summer to close a $365 million structural deficit.

Deming said each dean described a different arrangement for managing their college’s finances, and that conversations focused on comparing approaches.

“Part of it was just, ‘Hey, how are you dealing with this, and what are the things you’re looking at?’” he said. “But we didn’t really get into specifics.”

Deans at the conference also discussed grading reform, Deming said — a topic that has roiled Harvard’s faculty for much of the spring. A proposal to cap A grades at roughly 20 percent per course, plus up to four additional A’s, was released in February and amended in April to push implementation to fall 2027. The FAS postponed a vote at its April meeting and is expected to take it up in May.

Deming said peer institutions appeared to be weighing similar moves, which he suggested could ease the pressure on Harvard to act alone.

“One of the concerns people have raised about the proposed grading reform is whether it will be hard to hold the line if other schools don’t follow,” he said. “And of course, you never know what’s going to happen. But the sense I get is that other schools might follow.”

The Yale report, released April 10, was among the items discussed at the conference. Written by a 10-member Committee on Trust in Higher Education convened by Yale President Maurie D. McInnis, the report issued 20 recommendations spanning admissions, financial aid, free speech, and grade inflation — including a proposal that Yale College adopt a 3.0 mean grade.

Deming said he agreed with the report’s diagnosis, if not all of its prescriptions.

“I do think that schools like Harvard and Yale have experienced a loss of public trust over the past few years, and one can debate about how much of that is fair, but the fact is, it’s happened — and it’s a problem we need to solve,” he said.

But he stopped short of endorsing Yale’s proposed 3.0 mean grade.

“I don’t know that I would necessarily endorse an average GPA of 3.0,” he said. “That’s their right to do.”

Deming said he presented his own research on admissions to elite universities — co-authored with economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman — at the conference. Their findings on legacy preferences and recruited athletes are cited in Yale’s report.

Among the deans, Deming said, the Yale report was broadly well-received.

“People are like, ‘We like their report,’” he said. “I think there was broad approval of the idea of this, and buy-in to the idea that this is a problem that we collectively need to work on solving.”

He said he would be watching Yale’s implementation closely.

“I’m going to be following very closely what they do — how the report translates into changes and actions at Yale,” Deming said. “Sometimes it’s easier to diagnose the problem than it is to actually solve it.”

Deming compared Yale’s report to Harvard’s own task force reports on antisemitism and Islamophobia, released last year, though he said the Harvard reports were narrower in scope.

“They’re not about the general problem of loss of trust, but they share the feature that they are a kind of straightforward look at a problem and a holding ourselves accountable to things that were happening on campus in a way that I think has really galvanized action on campus,” he said.

He said Harvard would not necessarily replicate Yale’s approach.

“If we wrote a report like that at Harvard, I’m not sure we would arrive at all the same recommendations,” Deming said. “But I do think we would agree in our diagnosis.”

—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.