The Next Step

The EPC report recognized that grade inflation at Harvard is a “serious problem.” Now the Faculty must decide how this problem will be addressed.

Any initiative will come out of departmental discussions that will extend until Feb. 1.

However the department chairs contacted yesterday already agreed that an attempt to construct a Faculty-wide or even department-wide grading policy would be a mistake.

“I don’t think we should have a rigid formula,” Grindlay said. “If everyone in a particular class, whether it be six or 60, is doing superb work, then it should be duly noted.”

Buell and Thomas both said they were in favor of instituting a policy similar to that employed by Dartmouth College, where two grades are listed beside each course on a student’s transcript—the grade the student earned in the class and the median grade for the class.

Thomas said he would be in favor of employing such a system at Harvard because it would give a more concrete value to the grades distributed by Harvard Faculty members.

“A graduate school or an employer is entitled to know what an individual grade in an individual courses means, and such a system would provide that information,” Thomas said.

For Buell, Harvard’s problem centers around these grading discrepancies rather than the general upward trend of all undergraduate grades.

“Inequality in grading practices strikes me as a more serious problem than grade inflation per se,” Buell said. “Surely problems of fairness ought to loom larger than problems having to do with possible excess of generosity.”

Buell also said that the discussion on combating grade inflation should not obscure the need to address the quality of undergraduate education at Harvard.

“Overall there are certainly more serious and important issues of undergraduate educational policy than this—issues having to do with the educational quality as against measurement,” he said.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.