The report also addressed the issue of honors, which has been one of the most hotly-debated topics in the Faculty this semester.

The EPC’s report also explicitly criticized the oft-proposed solution of raising the GPA cutoff for honors.

According to the report, raising the cutoff would “discourage ‘average’ students from attempting a more challenging program...and may simply increase the pressure [on professors] to give magna-level grades and thesis readings.”

Instead, one of the proposals the committee recommended no longer designates concentrations as honors-only and eliminates honors tracks. Under the new system each concentration would define one set of standards that all concentrators would have to meet.

Departments would recommend candidates for honors and the Faculty would then award honors based on GPA cutoffs and distribution requirements.

Under the proposal, each department would decide whether to require a thesis of all or none of its concentrators—although this would “involve additional Faculty time and would likely increase the number of unsuccessful or indifferent theses.”

A second proposal for honors reform would further separate departmental honors from honors awarded by the Faculty. Faculty and department-awarded honors do currently compose two separate categories, but under this proposal, they would be distinct in both name and practice—Faculty-awarded honors would no longer take departmental recommendations into consideration.

For any of these recommendations to go into effect next fall, the full Faculty would have to vote in favor of it by the end of May.

And in the past, administrators have cited Faculty autonomy as a major setback to change.

“This isn’t a Faculty that anyone imposes anything on,” Pedersen said earlier this semester.

—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached at vascell@fas.harvard.edu.