The Harvard Crimson on Thursday reported that 79 percent of grades given to Harvard students in 2020-21 were in the A range. That is an increase of 20 percent over the last decade.
It leaves the question of not how difficult it is to flunk out of Harvard but how difficult it is not to excel. Faculty have apparently solved any equity issues by making everyone a top student. The problem was raised in the movie “The Incredibles,” when the villainous character “Syndrome” reveals a plan to make everyone a superhero. Syndrome’s motive is hardly altruistic: He hated superheroes and “with everyone super, no one will be.”
In 2010, 60 percent of Harvard students were given grades in the A range and that was viewed at the time as rather scandalous. Now, to not get an A, is apparently a shocker.Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh and Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana reportedly presented the data at the first meeting this year of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Claybaugh admitted that the “report establishes we have a problem — or rather, we have two: the intertwined problems of grade inflation and compression.”
She noted that the effort to secure better teaching evaluations may be driving the upward shift. She also noted that it obviously “complicates selection processes for prizes, fellowships, or induction into Phi Beta Kappa, which rely heavily on students’ grade point averages.”In other words, to paraphrase Syndrome: “With everyone an A student, no one will be.”
Yet, the suggestions on how to deal with the problem were even more bizarre. Romance languages and literatures Professor Annabel Kim suggested the “abolition of grading” and the institution of “narrative-based” evaluations.It is not clear how employers would be informed of the narrative-based performance of students in school.
On this trajectory, Harvard will be at 100 percent As in year 2033. It may seem the perfect grading system for a trophy generation. However, my students have long objected that they never wanted the trophies. It is not their generational problem, it is ours. We resolved the struggle over tough decisions by not making them.
What is interesting is that Harvard is creating an effective three-grade system where the curve runs from A+ to A-.
The new report seems to vindicate William F. Buckley, Jr. when he declared “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
This is why Harvard costs more. You have to pay for your GPA too since they don’t require you to earn it. Boy has my opinion of Harvard swirled the drain. What a dump.
Dis be so because all us at Harverd be sow smart. Weez all deserv A grades cause we be diverse, equite and inclusive. It be da best skool in da america.
SIMPLY PROVES LIBERAL- AKA HARVARD FACULTY- ARE IMMATURE CHILFDREN W/ NO WISDOM OR STANDARDS
” an effective three-grade system where the curve runs from A+ to A- ”
D and F are A-
B and C are A
A+ is A+
I always knew the ivy leagues were the smartest people in the world now there’s proof.
Signed, sincerely, Democrat Affirmative Equity Activist
I can make it so that 80% of the students in my course are given A’s:
— Who is Greta Thunberg?
— Who is Travis Kelce dating?
When 80% of the students at your university are given A’s, there is something wrong with your curriculum.
Having a rough time keeping up with the reading in your Progressive Studies class? Need some extra credit?
Repeat after me: We build learning communities of inclusivity, respect and equity. We have no place for hate. We have no place for hate.*
*Except for Christians. Southerners. Pro-life advocates. Those overweight, ignorant white people from Appalachia. Republicans. And especially the Jews. God, the Jews.
Have you seen the rampant, abhorrent, and heinous violence against Jews on our college campuses?
Black Lives Matter celebrating the slaughter of Jews with images of the paragliders used in terrorist attacks.
Hey Rashida Tlaib, flags are powerful symbols of intolerance, violence, and hate, right? Except for Palestinian flags. On a day of global jihad.
What’s a few beheadings when you’re fighting hate? Inclusivity, respect and equity, indeed.
Seriously, these acts of disempowerment and violence targeted at a minority group create a hostile environment that violates the codes of conduct at any right-thinking progressive institution. Those involved – especially the responsible faculty and administrators – need to be sanctioned and expelled. And prosecuted to the fullest extent of our hate crime laws.
We are experiencing a crisis of intolerance and hate. If our policies and laws don’t apply now, when do they apply? And to whom?
Answer correctly and you’ve got a guaranteed 4.0.
If CNN had been at the gates of Auschwitz when it was liberated, it would be asking the Jews at the camp whether they’ll guarantee not to commit war crimes against the Nazis. CNN is sick and depraved. Sick and depraved. Israeli President Herzog is not someone who gets hot under the collar very often. But check this starting at 2:22
Oldman….Excellent comment!!
Alan Dershowitz says the universities have no moral compass. Isn’t very pleased with Obama or Biden either.
https://youtu.be/JvsHmwumxC4?si=vz9wz5ZmkVPV9KSB
Wonder how many foreign students are attending Harvard. Independent Bob.
About 7,000 foreign students out of a student population of 30,000. Think about it, 7,000, American kids were denied admission and were replaced by foreign students. Unfortunately that is the case in nearly all every university and college. The administrations take a certain pride in not selecting American kids. I might add the entire application process is nothing more than a money making machine for the colleges and universities. They literally accept thousands applications at the rate of $75-$100 per yet admit less that 4% of applicants. Harvard alone accepts nearly 60,000 applications. No refund partial or otherwise. All schools are guilty of the same scam.
Equity per the American Founders: Freedom and self-Reliance in the complete absence of any form of bias or favoritism.
Equity per Karl Marx and “Crazy Abe” Lincoln: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” under the intellectually superior ironfisted “dictatorship of the hired help.”
C. S. Lewis, on equity:
In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. (Screwtape Proposes a Toast).
You can’t say that we weren’t warned.
Reminiscent of Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.
Everyone is equal, whether they want to be or not.
Spot on! I think of Harrison Bergeron every time I see Tammy Bruce on Fox News.
Reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal; whether all or any men succeed or fail in life is entirely up to each of those individual men.
We are… is?… NOW [politically] congruent (“=”). Throw another baby… fetus on the barbie, it’s over.
I admire your columns greatly. But one small correction on this one. It appears that grades in the A range increased by almost 20 percentage POINTS between 2010 and 2020 from 60% to almost 80%. That is an increase of almost 1/3 over the period, since 20÷ 60 equals 1/3.
This is just another way to achieve the impossible Utopian goal of making everyone equal. It’s not really an improvement over bringing us all down to the lowest common denominator, it just makes you understand why Ibram Kendi is a “distinguished scholar” even though he seems just to consume public grants and do no work; unless of course carping on CNN is now considered professorial work product.
Well said! No Diversity of thinking, Equity where everyone gets the same grade, Inclusion, which means if who think like us, you’re included!
I left Harvard 20 years ago.
Harvard was definitely liberal then, but today, Harvard borders on Marxism with Race the fulcrum versus economic statra.
US students ACT test scores drop to new 30 year low
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/us-students-act-test-scores-drop-to-new-30-year-low/
Are they going to lower the standards to compensate?
Several below made mention of 80% As as as being like giving all the students a Trophy. Cracker Jacks came to mind.
When opening a box of Cracker Jack as a child in the late 1960s and early 1970s you could expect to get a small toy that was interesting and fun. As the years went by, the toy became cheaper and then replaced with stickers. Now all you get is a code to play some online game. Nothing at all tangible.
Now Harvard is awarding these students a prize they will all settle for. Not the stereotype of a participation trophy; nope, not a metal trophy nor a plastic one. A Trophy became the “A” Trophy. It costs Harvard University just as much to type an A on a transcript as it does any other grade, and it can be replicated for next to nothing.
Giving out “A” Trophies dilutes the quality and resolve to do better in school, leading to a worse problem long term…”atrophy” because that’s going to happen to these students’ minds if they don’t exercise their brains more.
Darren,
Mix that (what you said) and the survey of managers by ResumeBuilder about how difficult it is to work with Gen Z, and that is truly the dumbing down of America.