"Bwahahaa! Please! I can't handle a B!"
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article ('A Harvard Cap On A's Has Students Smarting', p. A3, April 4):
"For years, Harvard has been handing out A's in abundance. Now,
a proposed cap would pump the brakes-and students are up in arms. Harvard's
faculty is set to vote next week on a proposal to cap the number of A's per
course, which now make up more than half of undergraduate grades after years of
inflation. The plan also suggests getting rid of GPA as an internal metric, instead using percentile rank to calculate honors like cum laude recognition."
There's nothing wrong with Harvard capping the A's as their overuse doesn't make the school look elite, as it purports to be. There's also nothing amiss in using percentile rank - say for honors calculation - which is also what the SAT and GRE exams use, i.e. one may place in the 92nd percentile in the verbal section and 90th percentile in math.
Yet to read the reactions of the Harvard students polled you'd think they were being asked to flunk every course. Especially when one reads:
"Student-made memes depict the administration as 'Gandalf from Lord of the Rings saying 'You shall not pass!"
Talk about drama queens! Of course you will pass, just not get an automatic A anymore. Hint: a D is - or used to be - a pass mark and an A used to be reserved as a superlative grade. But these snowflakes regard a 'D' the same way as being branded with a scarlet letter for 'failure'.
The WSJ piece goes on:
"A frenzied debate has gripped campus, with students protesting that the changes would increase stress, fuel competition and discourage academic exploration."
All of which is errant twaddle. Look, kiddies, stress has been part of college life since the year dot. If you're just coasting through courses with no stress then either the courses are way too easy, or the instructors way too generous (and perhaps intimidated by student evaluations).
As for fueling competition, wasn't that the hurdle you crossed to make it into Harvard in the first place? You had to compete with tens of thousands to snag that acceptance, in terms of SAT scores, academic average at your HS and the number and stature of the clubs you joined - as well as how many European study ventures you went on to expand your cultural horizons.
Discouraging academic exploration? That's more poppycock. If you are truly interested in trying new courses outside your specialty (say astronomy instead of business), the risk of getting a B or even C should not matter. After all, Intertel's Dr. Stephen Mason had noted university education:
"teaches a person to live - not to earn a living" - and that living encompasses an incentive for learning for its own sake"
But, of course, learning for its own sake is alien to these whiners. This is given all of these kids fancy themselves ultimately getting into the top 1 percent of this country, so anything that might dent a perfect 4.0 graduation average is anathema.
The administration's proposal follows a report showing that grade inflation at Harvard has grown dramatically over the past two decades. In the 2024-25 school year, roughly 60 percent of all undergraduate grades were A’s, a sharp increase from just 25 percent in the 2005-06 academic year. This prompted Amanda Claybaugh, the dean of undergraduate education, at Harvard, to tell the Journal:
“We have to do what’s in the interest of preserving the reputation of Harvard, and they all benefit from that.”
Ah yes, but try drilling that into the little lumpkins' craniums. A survey conducted by Harvard’s undergraduate student government found overwhelming opposition to the proposed A-grade cap, with approximately 94 percent of respondents disapproving. I'd wager this stat shows the preponderance of the entitled snowflake students, who would likely take a jump in the river if they got a C. "It would kill my chance of acing professional career!"
Whatever, kid.
But it also shows me exactly why this bunch at Harvard are furious over the proposed change, given they've been getting fat off the grade gravy train for so long. They're so used to it by now most probably don't have to study even an hour a night, if that. I mean, hell, we're looking at a change that could limit the number of A grades faculty can award in undergraduate courses, a move administrators say is necessary to curb rampant grade inflation. And as I have written before, the prevalence of grade inflation means a university's reputation craters - as well as its academic awards like 'Summa cum laude'. It can't be otherwise.
When a school "doles out A's like peas" to use the Bajan expression, it signals that it regards excellence as little different from mediocrity. If so many undergrads (3 out of 5) at Harvard have been getting A's the past two years then either: a) the courses were too easy, or b) the faculty are being intimidated by student evaluations.
One former Physics prof (William J. Veigele) writing
in a 2020 issue of Physics Today (August, p. 12, 'Teacher
Harassment and Loss of Respect'), wrote:
“One protocol I've always disliked
was the written student evaluations of professors."
Adding:
"A strong correlation holds between students earning low marks
in physics and the ones submitting unfavorable remarks."
And let's face it, if this correlation applies in one academic course domain it is bound to apply in others.
The Harvard vote needs to fulfill that 20 percent cap in A's to retain respect for the institution. This would bring the number of A’s back down to the levels Harvard had in 2011. Hopefully also, the proposal won't be scuttled like Princeton did after implementing its own cap on A's in 2004, then repealing the policy in 2014. According to the report in the WSJ:
"It had added a large element of stress to the students' lives"
Awwww...And these are the little puffkins who plan to run the world? Shape the universe? Try attending a really competitive Chinese university for a year. But then the Chinese are the ones who very soon will be the dominant movers and shakers.
See Also:
Opinion | Harvard capping As would combat grade inflation epidemic in higher ed - The Washington Post
Excerpt:
Like monetary inflation, runaway A’s in higher education are
a collective-action problem. About two-thirds of grades at Harvard College last school year
were A’s. That doesn’t count A-minuses, which were another 18 percent, meaning
fewer than one in six grades were a B-plus or lower.
You might have guessed grading at Ivy League schools was
lenient, though not this lenient.
There’s a thoughtful solution on the table. Unfortunately,
amid a student revolt last week, Harvard’s faculty postponed a vote to impose a cap on A’s. Forging ahead
with the plan anyway would send a promising signal about merit and competition
in American higher education.
Grade inflation — like the inflation of a currency — is a
collective action problem. Professors increase the share of A’s they hand out
because they know other professors are doing so and breaking from the herd
would have costs. Just 35 percent of grades at Harvard were A’s in the
2012-2013 academic year, but the number climbed at a rapid clip and then surged
during the covid pandemic.
The result is a collapse in the informational value of
grades, especially at the high end. “As GPAs accumulate against the wall of
4.0,” a Harvard faculty committee report noted earlier this year, “the
small numerical differences that remain are less reflective of genuine
variation in academic performance than random noise in the grading process.”
The proposal under consideration would cap the share of A’s
an instructor can give to 20 percent of the class plus four students. That
means that in a large introductory course, the share of students who could get
A’s — 24 out of 100, for example — would be lower than in smaller courses,
which tend to be more advanced. Up to eight A’s would be available in a class
of 20.
This effort matters because Harvard has the stature to prompt
similar changes across the rest of higher education, where grade inflation has
also been rampant. Princeton and Wellesley both tried to respond to grade inflation
with caps but abandoned their efforts in 2014 and 2019, respectively.
A major objection from students at Harvard is that going
back to grading on a curve will discourage them from participating in
extracurricular activities. But the core purpose of campus life is learning,
not socializing or networking, and academics have been excessively devalued at
Harvard in recent decades. This would help restore the balance.
And:
Thanks To Grade Inflation University 'Cum Laude' Honors Are Now Meaningless
And:
Brane Space: WHAT was that Harvard Twit Thinking?
And:
Brane Space: "Free Students From The Grading Curve"? - That Depends
