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Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh’s report on grade inflation is the first serious treatment of that problem issued since Claybaugh’s last report — and it is a superb rendition of the “pernicious effects” of leniency in grading. Whether in response to pressure from the Trump administration, or part of Harvard’s rather gradual wake-up from “woke,” grade inflation has now at last been addressed.

This problem is no recent concern. Half a century ago, on Nov. 18, 1975, I raised the matter to former Harvard President Derek C. Bok at a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At that time I cited with alarm the figure of 85 percent of students graduating with honors and noted a similar, earlier remark by the formidable then-FAS Dean Henry A. Rosovsky. Nothing came from these great names, nor did their successors successfully slow down grade inflation.

I occasionally provided reminders, for grade inflation and affirmative action were the two lost causes I espoused as an annoying Socratic gadfly. A dean once told me that if I shut up I would get the action I wanted. I tried that and it didn’t work. Now I see that retirement seems to strengthen my voice.

Over this half-century, the report shows, grades continued to inflate with amazing consistency despite the ceiling of straight A’s. Their pressure to inflate created enormous compression at the top so that a ridiculous three decimal points are needed to state one’s grade average. It is as if the purpose were to reach by infinite approximation the abolition of grade differences altogether, to reach the golden moment when every student in every course receives the top grade.

This scenario would be the end of grading. The principle of merit used to get into Harvard is abandoned once there. As grading by professors lapses, it is replaced by the grading of fellow students who judge the value of your contribution to extra-curriculars like your sport or your final club. Meritocracy commits suicide where it belongs, in your academics, yet remains alive where you prepare and rehearse your future success in society.

The report excels in describing the harm done to students in motivation to study, information on their abilities, and distinction of excellence. It says little about the faculty, expressing no wonder at how such a remarkable, unprecedented failing could occur. The only excuse for it, one could say, is that every faculty elsewhere did the same thing. Harvard has been no better, its professors handing out A’s to all comers like Halloween candy, its leadership composed and quiescent.

The reason why the report discusses students and not faculty is that, being addressed to the faculty, it does not criticize whom it wishes to persuade. It does not blame students, who merely welcomed and did not bring about grade inflation. One measure implemented in 2008, requiring faculty to participate in course evaluations, is shown to have encouraged grade inflation. The report reasonably confines itself to proposing rather modest action.

It suggests having a few A+’s. They would please and distinguish the super-nerds. Or would a few of them quickly multiply? If so, nothing much is gained; if not, why not reduce the A’s instead? Also, why not establish the notion of average by returning to the C as the average grade? One could also require each professor to maintain B or B- as the median grade in his courses, allowing the distinctions he wishes but at levels that make grades significant. What about the bell curve as the image of human attainments? Surely the C of satisfactory is more common than the A of superlative excellence.

The faculty must be persuaded to confront the problem of collective action. It will see disadvantages to students from grade inflation more readily than misjudgments of its own. These are based on the perception it very well knows is not true — that all students are excellent or near excellent. How could the faculty have been affirming this absurd notion for so long and not feel that something’s wrong? Teaching is to impart what one knows — and then to check whether the student has taken hold of it. Some do better than others, which means inevitably that some do worse. Judgments of grading are part of the knowledge a teacher imparts: How well have you done? As grading is part of teaching, self-awareness in students is part of learning. This point is featured in the report. Students should ask themselves, “where do I stand in my learning?” Grade inflation supplies the false and misleading answer that you’re at the top — just like everyone else.

Partisanship aside, let’s just say that democracy has an instinct for democratizing itself. Its solution for every problem tends to be finding an inequality to equalize. The premise of this move is that all are equally sufficient in the ability to govern not just oneself, but also the whole of society. We don’t need to examine this premise now since we somehow manage to get along by accepting it. But grade inflation from the faculty puts the exaggerated premise in the minds of students that they are equally excellent in their studies. As if this were necessary to their democratic self-esteem!

Wisdom says that democracy works only by adapting certain inequalities of excellence to qualify its main principle of equality. To expose them, professors have to grade sensibly.

Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 is the Kenan Research Professor of Government at Harvard.