While some departments are renowned for being easy graders, like English or Economics, others, like philosophy, are considered anything but easy. So, when departments receive pressure to lower grades, it might not help the situation. When pressure is applied across the board, those in departments which are graded more harshly will be hurt even more.

Also, when professors receive pressure to change the grading in the class, they often make changes with the sole purpose of lowering the average grade. As a result, students who do extremely well and deserve a certain grade by reasonable standards might not receive it because the professor wants to make the class harder.

Many proposals to combat grade inflation have been tossed around, but the only one that is currently being considered is the addition of classes' mean grades to transcripts. The proposal, however, has been much criticized and stalled before the Committee on Undergraduate Education.

Such a proposal, as critics have already argued, would make classes more competitive because it would be in every student's interest to have others do worse. It would also distort reality because grades would be evaluated compared to how the rest of the class did. While in large classes this might prove useful, in smaller ones where the entire class may have worked exceptionally hard it could easily devalue hard work. One cannot evaluate the rigors of a course by just looking at numbers.

If any form of unified grade deflation is ever instituted at Harvard, it will definitely hurt students. Any move that lowers the grades across the College will make graduates look less attractive to outside observers, giving other top schools' graduates an advantage for jobs or graduate schools.

Whatever the problems of grade inflation may be, the solutions offered at this point are much worse. Grades should be a secondary part of any student's experience at Harvard, and the present system allows that situation to occur.