Harvard Admits That Grades Have Lost Their Meaning

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | November 20, 2025 | Reagan Allen

[karpov]

At many of the country’s most prestigious universities, an “A” has become a default instead of a distinction. It used to be a mark that indicated academic excellence and proficiency, yet lately it seems like almost everyone is “exceptional.” Now, Harvard’s much-remarked-upon grade-inflation report, released late last month, confirms what many have suspected for years: Grades at elite colleges have lost their meaning.

According to the report, in 2005 “A’s” accounted for 24 percent of all grades given at Harvard College. In 2025, that number jumped to over 60 percent. Even the cutoff mark for summa cum laude status has been forced higher, standing at a 3.989 GPA as of this year, lest everyone achieve the honor. If everyone’s exceptional, is anyone really?

Harvard’s own faculty aren’t happy about it. Many believe there is little “resolving power at the top,” which leaves students without an accurate sense of how they’re performing compared to others. Teachers struggle to distinguish between merely “satisfactory” and “outstanding” work, and prize committees find it harder to differentiate between students with identical GPAs. Grades used to motivate learning and measure mastery. Now they’re just polite checkmarks for finishing the work at all.

Why have standards changed? According to the report, professors feel pressure to maintain high enrollments and avoid low “Q-scores,” Harvard’s course-evaluation metric. Teaching fellows worry that poor “Q-scores” will limit their job prospects. Students who typically earned “A’s” in high school expect the same leniency at college. Administrators, eager to show compassion for stressed or struggling students, have unintentionally helped erode academic rigor. Faculty who want to return to proper grading standards worry that administrators wouldn’t have their backs. The result, as one faculty member put it, is a “race to the bottom.”

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college; gradeinflation; harvard

[Jim Noble]

The Harvard student might as well get the Big Red H to hang on the wall the day he gets the acceptance letter.

You can flunk out of Salem State - but you can’t flunk out of Harvard.

[Honorary Serb]

On the other hand, there was that Physical Chemistry professor at MIT back in the day (Walter Thorson, a hardline Calvinist), who graded so hard that the Chem department had to intervene to fix the situation and prevent nearly the whole class of chemists and biologists from flunking out!

The chemical engineers had their own Thermodynamics course, so were exempt from thus debacle!

I somehow earned a B in Physical Chemistry! That B made the chemists just as jealous as they were of my As in Organic Chemistry courses! Besides that, I got all Cs in the Math courses that were prerequisite to Physical Chemistry, but still earned that B!

[Bullish]

I was raised in Claremont and went through school there. Congrats on going to Harvey Mudd. It’s still one of the better schools.

[TexasFreeper2009]

the only way to keep the blacks they only let in to be woke not fail is to inflate the grades for all.

[BlackbirdSST]

Grades? Harvard has lost its meaning.

They may as well present the 'Mail in Degree Program' and advertise it on the back of match books.

[Carry_Okie]

Congrats on going to Harvey Mudd. It’s still one of the better schools.

The school blew off its original mission in pursuit of a quicker buck. I lost a lot of respect for it in the process. That mission was technical breadth in a social context as preparation for graduate work in a specialty. Effectively, it was to specialize in developing generalists. Yet the demands of breadth grew beyond a 4-year curriculum. So they blew off the mission.

Frankly, I think they could have attracted more money in the long run had they retained that mission. There are ways to reduce its demands, but they blew that off in the name of accepting less qualified entrants in the name of social justice and diversity while at the same time operating from a narrower social perspective. It was a huge mistake, for which I blame a delusional faculty and its trustees.

[Svartalfiar]

Harvard’s own faculty aren’t happy about it. Many believe there is little “resolving power at the top,” which leaves students without an accurate sense of how they’re performing compared to others.

....They're the ones handing out all the As! They're the ones in the best position to fix the problem!

[Svartalfiar]

Teachers struggle to distinguish between merely “satisfactory” and “outstanding” work, and prize committees find it harder to differentiate between students with identical GPAs.

It's actually very easy to do. Excepting labs or more advanced/theoretical classes, the majority of a degree (and the related liberal arts required chunk) is classes that are knowledge regurgitation or basic application. Set up your exams where:

10-20% of the questions are easy, everyone should get 100% on.
50-60% of the questions are regular material that a regular student gets 90% of.
30% of the exam are hard conceptual/advanced questions that have not been taught in class and require putting material together or thinking beyond or outside the box. Expect 20-50% of these to be correctly answered.

Hey, now you'll have the average student scoring in the 70-80% range, and the "outstanding" students you're looking for will still have their As, and actually deserve them!

[DPMD]

Grades have lost their meaning? How about college?

[Night Hides Not]

My accounting professor never used numbers, and his tests were 100% essay questions. His grading scale was generous, I recall receiving a B+ for a score of 90/150. Funny thing was I scored 87 on the first 3 questions, and he tricked me on the last two.

The best I ever did was a semester final was 141/150. Believe me, everyone was shocked at that! We happened to meet in the bookstore the following month, and he came over to congratulate me: “I want to shake your hand, I’m proud of you!” The only sound heard was from jaws dropping in disbelief…lol.

As the only accounting professor, our lives were in his hands. You were scared to death as a sophomore, still jittery as a junior, but filled without appreciation and respect for him as a senior.

[daniel1212]

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] - https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Harvard_University&redirect=no&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop}

[Bullish]

It figures they’re all screwed up now too. HM used to be a highly respected school when I was around.

[Carry_Okie]

HM used to be a highly respected school when I was around.

Still is, but for the wrong reasons. FReegards, CO