A’s will no longer mean average at Harvard. In a 458–201 vote, the university’s faculty agreed last week to give A’s to only 20 percent of students in undergraduate courses. The cap will take effect in the 2027–2028 academic year, with a review after three years.
It’s not easy for universities to reform grading. Schools face many incentives to inflate grades, from maintaining enrollment to securing favorable student evaluations. They also often resist regulating faculty practices. These pressures come not just from faculty and students, but from the broader educational ecosystem of which universities are a part.
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Harvard’s decision is a significant step in the right direction, but the cap will have limited success in addressing grade inflation. That’s because it’s impossible for one university by itself to overcome the forces that encourage grade inflation. More coordinated action—including from actors outside the university environment—is necessary for substantial change.
Harvard has been formally considering how to respond to rising grades since the coronavirus pandemic. In 2024, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh assembled a committee to develop proposals for addressing the issue. Late last year, Harvard released a report authored by Claybaugh that found that 60 percent of students received A’s, up from just 25 percent two decades ago.
In response, the university appeared to weigh two kinds of approaches. The first involved weaker, cosmetic changes, such as expanding the grading scale to include an A+ to distinguish truly exceptional work. The second focused on changing incentives, with the goal of returning grade distributions to where they were a decade ago. Harvard made the right choice going with the second option.
But the cap applies only to A’s. Thus, the change will encourage a shift from a glut of A’s to a glut of A–’s and B+’s.
Some object that Harvard students merit high grades because they’re already high achievers. That assumption is complicated by K-12 grade inflation and declining academic standards. Harvard’s report found that undergraduates “struggle with readings that students completed with ease just ten years ago.”
Nor is student mastery necessarily accurately reflected in current grading practices. Harvard’s report indicated that some faculty adopted alternative systems that “eschewed conventional grading,” such as ungrading and contract-based grading. These approaches can include giving students automatic B’s just for attending class or turning in work. The A cap does not address this guaranteed-B problem.
While it has focused on distinguishing between great and excellent work, Harvard still does not appear able to restore rigor to its overall grading system. Harvard College Dean David Deming said that he did not know whether he “would necessarily endorse an average GPA of 3.0,” referring to Yale’s proposal to address grade inflation.
Deming’s view is not without justification. In the past, universities that adopted ambitious policies were unable to keep them because their students then operated at a competitive disadvantage.
Harvard’s cap would likely move the university from 2025’s median GPA of 3.83 toward one of 3.64—well within the range of average Ivy League GPAs. Harvard’s modest reform, therefore, might stick, because students would still look similar to peers at competitor universities. But to fully fix grade inflation, Harvard would need to treat the A cap as a starting point for broader changes.
Harvard demonstrates that individual schools are limited in what they can achieve when tackling grade inflation. The university’s leadership was willing to name the problem, and its drive to improve public trust won out over the incentives to stay the course. Had Harvard failed to pass any grading reforms, even after years of deliberation, it would have hardened the public’s view that universities are incapable of change.
But as distorted grades have become the norm across higher education, universities face too many incentives to delay, dilute, or dodge substantial reform. We will need participation from more universities and a strong push from external actors to truly move the needle on restoring academic standards. Now is the perfect time to act.