The total number of magna cum laude honors awarded by Harvard College dropped for the second year in a row, with the Class of 2003 receiving 10 percent fewer degrees at that level than their predecessors. Administrators say the decline may have been prompted by faculty awareness of the new, more restrictive honors policy that will be in place next year.

Four hundred and thirty members of the College’s most recent graduating class came away with magna honors in their field of concentration; the previous class boasted 484. The class of 2001 had 510.

“Probably the faculty is beginning to think in terms of the new honors policy, which will be in place in another year,” Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71 wrote in an e-mail, “where at most 50 percent of the class graduates with honors, and about 20 percent with high honors.”

This years total meant under 10 percent graduated with high honors.

Gross also announced that undergraduates’ grades slipped last year, by .07 on the 15-point scale in 2001-2002. There had been a decrease of .02 the previous academic year.

Grading data is not yet available for the 2002-2003 academic year, according to Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education John T. O’Keefe.

As with the decline in high honors degrees, Gross said the slight decline in grades might be due to an increase in attention paid by faculty to grades and their significance in recent years.

“It’s just a conversation the faculty is having about grades and honors, what an A means, what a B means,” said Gross. “I think the conversation we’re having about grading is having some impact.”

As to whether or not professors are worried about the history of accusations of grade inflation at Harvard—possibly responsible for the decline in grades—Gross said, “some more than others.”

Summa cum laude honors were down 10 from last year’s total of 73.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.