Higher Education Standards and Grading

A Harvard faculty committee’s 19-page proposal would cap A grades at 20% per course (with instructors allowed up to four additional As beyond the cap) and create an internal “average percentile rank” to determine honors and awards as part of a broader crackdown on grade inflation that has already reduced A rates. Faculty chair Stuart Shieber says roughly 60% of current courses already meet the proposed cap, and instructors who opt out would have to grade on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.