Harvard figures show most of its grades are A's or B's

By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff, 11/21/2001

aying that grade inflation at Harvard University has become a serious problem, school officials took the unusual step yesterday of making public statistics on grades since 1985, revealing that most grades that Harvard awards are A's and B's.

In a report sent to all faculty members yesterday, dean of undergraduate education Susan Pedersen said that a Harvard faculty committee plans to develop common guidelines for grading and ''restore a more robust distinction between excellent and good work.''

According to the report, 48.5 of Harvard grades last year were A's and A-minuses, compared with 33.2 percent of grades in 1985. Grades in the three C categories fell from 10 percent in 1985 to 4.9 percent last year. D's and failing grades accounted for less than 1 percent each.

Humanities courses awarded a higher percentage of A's and A-minuses than the hard sciences or the social sciences, the report said. High marks are especially common in seminar-style classes with fewer than 25 students: Almost two-thirds of all grades given in humanities seminars are in the A range. The courses with the fewest A's are social-science classes with 75 students or more, in which only a third of grades are A's or A-minuses.

Harvard's Educational Policy Committee started reviewing grades early this year, finding that some professors now award A's for average work. A Globe study last month determined that a record 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with honors last year, far more than in past decades, thanks to the rising number of A's and B's. Harvard's honors rate was far higher than that of any other Ivy League school, and some officials at Yale, Cornell, and elsewhere derided it as a sign of grade inflation.

Last month, Pedersen asked faculty members to explain and justify their grading practices by February. Yesterday's report provides the data she hopes will drive that discussion.

''With such a narrow range of effective grades available [essentially, B, B+, A-, and A], faculty find it difficult to distinguish adequately between work of differing quality; they may also be unable to make such distinctions clear to students,'' she wrote in the report.

''Grade inflation works against the pedagogical mission of the faculty,'' Pedersen added. ''Are appropriate signals being given to students about ways in which their work can be improved? Are students being motivated to do their best work?''

Not all observers see an increase in A's as a sign of slipping standards. One reason for higher grades, according to the report, is that students may be better prepared and harder working than in years past.

Pederson cited other factors that might influence professors' grading practice, including pressure to grade similarly to colleagues, fears of being labeled a ''tough grader,'' and pressure from students, who have come to expect A's and B's.

Harvard, like many universities, now emphasizes students' interpretive ability over subject mastery, in other words, their ability to analyze and formulate ideas over their ability to digest and memorize information. This shift, some professors told the Educational Policy Committee, has made it more difficult to grade students on clear-cut knowledge of absolute facts.

Several professors declined to comment on the report yesterday because they had not read it. One professor who had reviewed the report called the data powerful.

''There is a tremendous discussion that now needs to take place in our department and among the entire Faculty of Arts and Sciences,'' said the professor, who asked not to be named because his department has not met to discuss the data yet.

Patrick Healy can be reached by e-mail at phealy@globe.com.

This story ran on page B6 of the Boston Globe on 11/21/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.