"I do have some concerns about the compression of the grading scale," Feldman said. "I don't think that's healthy."

"Ideally, one just gets the faculty to agree on a common grading scheme that's reasonable and stick to it," he said. "So far I don't have a good way of doing that."

He said that even within departments, grading can vary, because upper-division courses with concentrators will probably have a higher average than lower-division courses.

"This type of variation really has to be taken into account," Feldman said. "Each department should gauge on its own how it can really do that. This can't be done in any mechanismic way, but through discussion of the faculty."

CUE committee member Alissa S. Brotman '97, who said she is undecided on transcript reform, said after the meeting that she is worried it could make Harvard students even more competitive.

She said that one Monday morning, she went around and asked her friends how their weekends were.

"They judged everything on the amount of work they accomplished," said Brotman, who is a biochemistry concentrator. "They didn't say, 'Oh, I went to a great party.'"

"To place additional stress on students to compete for a grade might be bad," Brotman said.

She added that she sees nothing wrong with students receiving high grades if they spend a lot of time on a class.

One professor on the committee said that she would like to see students "learn for the sake of learning" and not worry so much about grades.

"I actually didn't realize until the meeting today that students truly think that Bs are bad," said Assistant Professor of Psychology Cynthia F. Moss.

She said that "a systematic study of the policies that are used to make admissions decisions" to graduate schools might ease the minds of students.

But Hankins said that entrance to graduate school is a pressing concern.

"I really am worried about Harvard students being at a disadvantage in law school applications" if Harvard's average grades were to go down as a result of transcript change, he said. "There are places that operate strictly on numbers, like the University of Texas.