Harvard Faculty Weigh Amendment That Would Tighten A-Grade Cap in Smaller Courses

Harvard faculty are weighing an amendment to a proposed cap on undergraduate A’s that would substantially reduce the number of A’s awarded in smaller courses, the latest revision to a policy faculty have debated for months.

The current proposal would cap the number of A’s in any course at 20 percent of enrolled students plus four. The amendment, drafted by Physics professor Matthew D. Schwartz, would replace the flat addition of four with 0.6 times the square root of the total number of students.

Across all courses, the two formulas would produce roughly the same overall share of A’s — 31 percent under the amendment, compared with 32.3 percent under the current proposal. (The current share of As awarded to undergraduates is substantially higher at 63 percent.)

But the amendment’s impact would be far more pronounced in smaller courses. In courses with 12 or fewer students, the maximum allowed share of A’s would fall from 70.8 percent to 51.1 percent.

In larger classes, Schwartz’s formula would slightly increase the cap, raising the allowed share of A’s by one to three percentage points in courses with more than 30 students.

Schwartz said in a Sunday interview that combating grade compression was even more important in smaller courses — which tend to be more advanced — than in large lectures.

“This has to be done, not just in the large lecture classes, which wasn’t really the problem to begin with, but in the small, advanced seminars and other classes, where it’s much more important to distinguish the students,” Schwartz said.

The original proposal, released in February, drew cautious support from many faculty who saw it as a way to curb grade inflation, though some raised concerns about its impact on students. Undergraduates have overwhelmingly opposed the cap, with nearly 85 percent of respondents to a Harvard Undergraduate Association survey saying they would “definitely not” support the policy.

Faculty are set to vote on the proposal in mid-May, following the next faculty meeting. If approved, the policy will take effect in the 2027-28 academic year, after faculty backed a series of amendments earlier this month that pushed back implementation by a year, added a “SAT+” designation to courses graded on a satistfactory-unsatisfactory basis, and adjusted the cap calculation to include all undergraduate students enrolled in a course — including those taking it pass-fail.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh, on behalf of the Faculty Committee on Grading, is polling faculty on Schwartz’s amendment through an online form that closes Wednesday. The subcommittee on grading will ultimately decide whether to bring the amendment to next month’s faculty meeting.

“The Subcommittee on Grading is working hard to develop the strongest possible proposal that would command the broadest possible support,” Claybaugh wrote in a Friday email to faculty.

Schwartz said amending the formula was necessary to meaningfully address grade inflation and compression.

“If you really want to fight grade inflation, you have to take it seriously,” Schwartz said. “Do we want to mean it, or do we want to just, you know, ‘do something’?”

But in her defense of the proposal shared Friday, Government professor Alisha C. Holland, a member of the subcommittee on grading, framed the limited impact of the existing formula on smaller courses as “an underappreciated feature of the design” that made it clearly understandable by external audiences.

“The beauty of the 20%+4 formulation is that externally, it reflects our shared commitment to rigor: a cap of 20%, down from roughly 60%,” she wrote. “That’s a striking headline number. But the +4 meaningfully softens the actual impact, particularly in the smaller courses where many of our students do their most advanced work.”

“Our students get the reputational benefit of being graded under a system that signals high standards, without the cap being so severe that it puts them at a material disadvantage in graduate admissions or on the job market,” Holland added.

Holland said Monday that incorporating average percentile rank into honors determinations would help offset any GPA advantage students might gain by enrolling in smaller courses. Faculty will vote on the two proposals separately in May, though Holland noted they were originally designed to function together.

She added that the current discussion centers on “nitty-gritty” details rather than any substantive disagreement.

“What’s remarkable is how much agreement there is between the two proposals,” Holland said. “The debate over the formula is really about fine-tuning the reform, not about whether to act or whether a cap is appropriate.”

Schwartz said the discussion around the amendment was aimed at finding a proposal faculty could broadly support.

“There’s no opposition. It’s not like we’re on opposite sides,” Schwartz said. “What we all want is the best grading proposal reform that the faculty will support.”

—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.