Harvard has become known as the poster child for grade inflation. An A is by far the most common grade, while anything below a B is very rare. The school has come up with a plan to stop and even slightly reverse the upward creep in grades. Will it do any good?
That’s the question Daniel Buck addresses in today’s Martin Center article.
He writes:
This academic year, Harvard has endured a dark night of the soul, including (among other troubles) facing down the consequences of grade inflation and searching for curricular absolution. In a much-publicized fall report, the university confessed that its current grading system is, in fact, a “problem” — an admission that reportedly left students ‘soul-crushed’ and crying in their beds.”
Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery, but will Harvard’s plan accomplish much? Buck is skeptical, pointing to similar efforts at other prestigious schools that came to naught.
Under Harvard’s new grading system, there will be a cap on the number of A grades a professor can award. However, Buck observes, “Professors cannot give more than 20 percent of their students A’s. A-’s and B+’s, though? They can award as many as their hearts desire. That’s akin to replacing a diet of Big Gulps and Big Macs with large Slurpees and Quarter Pounders — technically better but an improvement too small to matter.”
Looking at grade inflation generally, Buck argues that no one school, not even Harvard, can tackle it, writing: “But reform cannot come solely from within. There’s a collective-action problem that necessitates change from outside of Harvard. As Princeton’s experiment exemplifies, if only one institution changes, there’s strong pressure to revert back to inflation. And if an elite 18-year-old can go elsewhere for an Ivy League degree at a fraction of the effort and stress, why wouldn’t he or she? One institution cannot likely withstand such pressure alone.”
That’s right. We need a revival of academic standards, both grading and curricular, and that won’t happen until Americans stop looking merely at college credentials and demand value.