Want Straight A’s in College? Go to Harvard.

The New American ^ | October 29, 2025 | Michael Tennant

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Ingfbruno/Wikimedia CommonsHarvard University

Grade inflation runs so rampant in Harvard University’s undergraduate school that practically everyone graduates with an A average, according to a new report from the school’s Office of Undergraduate Education.

“Our grading is too compressed and too inflated, as nearly all faculty recognize; it is also too inconsistent, as students have observed,” wrote Harvard College Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh. “More importantly, our grading no longer performs its primary functions and is undermining our academic mission.”

The 25-page report, issued Monday to faculty and students, is a scathing indictment of a system that prioritizes students’ feelings and desires — not to mention their “diversity” — at the expense of their education.

Faking the Grade

According to the Harvard Crimson, the report “found that more than 60 percent of grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates are A’s, compared to only a quarter of grades two decades ago.”

Grade inflation isn’t a new phenomenon at Harvard. Even in 2015, graduates’ median grade point average (GPA) was 3.64. By the last academic year, it had increased to 3.83. “And since the 2016-2017 academic year,” reported the Crimson, “the median Harvard College GPA has been an A.”

In other words, all one has to do to graduate from Harvard with a nearly perfect GPA is to get admitted. That is not an easy task, of course, although it has been made easier in recent years for those who check the appropriate “diversity” boxes — which Claybaugh confessed is part of the problem:

For the past decade or so, the College...

[Da Coyote]

Syndrome, from the Incredibles (Pixar), didn’t know he was talking about Harvard when he said, “If everyone is special, then no one is.”

[Steven Scharf]

So much for gentelmen Cs.

[DPMD]

Can Harvard alumni whose GPA was less than straight A’s now submit their transcripts to the college for updating?

[irishjuggler]

Yeah, that was another era. As the story goes, approx. 1850 a Harvard professor asked a lazy student why he was there if he was unwilling to put much effort into his studies. The young man replied, “The degree of Harvard is worth money to me in Chicago.”

[edwinland]

The problem is CLGS, Cum Laude General Studies. This is awarded to anyone who graduates with > 3.0 average (I think it’s 3.0; it might be 3.3).

In 1990 about 80% of Harvard students graduated CLGS.

Problem: names of graduates and honors are public. Therefore you could identify the bottom 20% of the class by name, and compare them to the (also public) Freshman “Facebook.” The results were very uncomfortable for Harvard’s admissions department.

Now everyone graduates with honors and the problem is gone.

[ByteMercenary]

So can we say that a degree from Haaaavad is basically a participation trophy? This is just another example of how Big Education is less concerned about their product than about how many paying students they can squeeze thru the front door.

[Sicon]

More importantly, our grading no longer performs its primary functions and is undermining our academic mission.

Yeah? What academic mission is that? Teaching courses on masturbation and BDSM?

[daniel1212]

In 2001, Harvard was focused upon as part of a controversy in which high, but allegedly unwarranted, GPA's (Grade Point Averages) were awarded. While in 1940 C-minus was the most common GPA at Harvard, and in 1955 only 15 percent of undergraduates had a GPA of B-plus or higher, in the year 2000, 50% in of all the grades given were As or A-minuses, with just six percent being C-pluses or lower. More than 90 percent of the class of 2001 had earned grade-point averages of B-minus or higher.

In a Harvard Crimson article, noted conservative Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield contended that "Grade inflation got started … when professors raised the grades of students protesting the war in Vietnam..." "At that time, too, white professors, imbibing the spirit of the new policies of affirmative action, stopped giving low grades to black students, and to justify or conceal this, also stopped giving low grades to white students." The problem was essentially seen as the predominance of the notion of self-esteem, "in which the purpose of education is to make students feel capable and 'empowered,' and professors should hesitate to pass judgment on what students have learned." Such assertions resulted in no small controversy.

Harvard alumnus and author Ross Douthat attributed this problem partly to socioeconomic differences, and noted that "Harvard students are creatively lazy, gifted at working smarter rather than harder", being brilliant largely in their tactics "to achieve a maximal GPA in return for minimal effort." Few people who have taught at Harvard agree with Douthat's notions. - [19 ] Ross Douthat, "The Truth About Harvard," The Atlantic Monthly March 2005 ; adapted from his book, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class.

[Getready]

With the advent of online technical journals, online teachers, and widespread sharing of info., there is no need to go to a “great” school. The only two advantages would be doing upper division, or graduate work with some department that specializes in a subject one is interested in ,or
face to face building of human connections.
I, ahem, IMHO, pronounce Hahvaard....dead.

[econjack]

I taught at the university level for over 40 years and at the beginning of each class, I would ask if they wanted me to grade “on a curve” or would they prefer 90 and above is an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, and so on. Always the students immediately stated they preferred to be graded on a curve. I then ask if they understood that meant a normal distribution, which means: 10% would get A’s, and a matching 10% would get F’s, 20% would get B’s and D’s, and everyone else would get a C. I told them to think about it between now and the next class. In every case, they dropped the idea of a curve.

At Harvard, is the competition between students for grades or do the faculty simply set one bar and everyone clears that bar with the same clearance. Harvard’s kidding itself.

[Steven Scharf]

Once you get hire for your first job, no one cares what your GPA was (for most professions). Not one job aplication has asked me my GPA in 40 years. I haven’t a clue what it was.

I went to a major accounting school in NYC. I was one of 5 social science majors to graduate in 1983. I was hired before I graduated by someone who had known me since my freshman year in college.

5 years later I was working in a whole nother profession then I went to school for and that morphed into computer data managment and other stuff I had not even touch in college.

[dfwgator]

I thorougly enjoyed being a “Curve Killer” in school.