May 20 (Reuters) – Harvard University faculty have imposed a limit on the number of “A” grades that can be given to undergraduate students in an effort to end a growing trend of grade inflation at the elite U.S. university.
In hundreds of votes cast over the past week, more than two-thirds of the voting faculty supported a measure allowing them to award A’s to no more than one-fifth of the students enrolled in a course, plus up to four more students.
The change, which will go into effect in the fall of 2027, is one of the first efforts by a prestigious U.S. university to tackle the widespread problem of grade inflation, which many faculty members say is undermining educational integrity and making it harder to discern true academic excellence.
An October report by Harvard Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh warned that grade inflation was “damaging the academic culture” of Harvard’s undergraduate college by motivating students to only enroll in classes where they could excel, making them feel more stressed about lower grades, and “hollowing out” students’ sense of achievement.
The report found that A’s represented a steadily rising share of all grades awarded to students of the college: 24% in 2005, 40% in 2015, and 60% in 2025.
Claybaugh heralded the faculty’s new move to cap A’s as an “important step toward ensuring that our grading system better serves its central purposes,” such as “recognizing genuine distinction.”
“It will, I believe, strengthen the academic culture of Harvard,” she said in a statement after the vote.
The new policy does not put quotas on any grades below A, such as A-. Harvard does not use A+.
During the same voting period, faculty members rejected a proposal that would have allowed course instructors to seek exemptions from the cap on A grades.
(Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Paul Thomasch and Sanjeev Miglani)
