A recent article in The Atlantic contained a notable account of the final meeting of the Spring 2024 semester for Harvard’s college faculty. As part of his annual report, then-Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana could not keep a straight face when reporting that the average grade at the school was now 3.8. As Khurana chuckled at the lunacy of an average of an A, the rest of the faculty joined in the laughter. It appears that, after years of runaway grade inflation, Harvard’s grading system has become a bad joke even among its own faculty.
All schools have experienced grade inflation, which is often mandated by grading curves that prevent faculty from assigning more accurate grades. Harvard has long been the leader in this race to the top. The ripple effect is that other schools have sought to match the generous grading to appease students who are used to such generous grading standards from high school. The result at Harvard is that the grading scale runs from A to A+.
Here is the account in the article:
During their final meeting of the spring 2024 semester, after an academic year marked by controversies, infighting, and the defenestration of the university president, Harvard’s faculty burst out laughing. As was tradition, the then-dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana, had been providing updates on the graduating class. When he got to GPA, Khurana couldn’t help but chuckle at how ludicrously high it was: about 3.8 on average. The rest of the room soon joined in, according to a professor present at the meeting.
They were cracking up not simply because grades had gotten so high but because they knew just how little students were doing to earn them.
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