On May 19, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted 458 to 201 to cap flat A grades in undergraduate courses, limiting the total number of A grades to 20 percent of course enrollment, plus four students. Other institutions watching elite peers for cover will be tempted to follow. They shouldn’t. The closest institutional analogues have produced documented harm. Even Harvard’s own 2023 grading report warned against policies of this kind.
Harvard’s case for the cap might feel intuitive: If everyone gets an A, an A means nothing. But that intuition confuses meaning with scarcity. If we’re going to use grades at all, a grade should report what a student has demonstrated against a defined standard—not where they finished in a class ranking. If Harvard wants grades to mean more, the answer is pedagogical: clearer standards, not rarer A’s. Rarity is not rigor.
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