Academia

The Incredibles: Roughly 80 Percent of Grades Given at Harvard are in the A Range
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.”

 

118 thoughts on “The Incredibles: Roughly 80 Percent of Grades Given at Harvard are in the A Range”

  1. I think this is also happening in Harvard Law. Made mince meet out of many in hearings. They seemed a bit slow.

  2. It may well have changed, but I never found any difficulty in professional association with Harvard graduates; not MIT for that matter. Hard to take and grown worse is the arrogance of those associated with Princeton. (Paul Krugman is an exception, but he escaped.) Even my youngest son commented on this about his year+ as a graduate student there in a field far removed from mathematics.

  3. “Faculty have apparently solved any equity issues by making everyone a top student.”

    – Professor Turley
    ____________________

    EQUITY IS THE ABSENCE OF BIAS OR FAVORITISM

    Equity at Harvard would produce a rigorously competitive environment, bereft of any notion or scintilla of bias and favoritism, resulting in a full spectrum of winners and losers.

    The “equity” in this sentence consists of the voluminous “free stuff” and “free status” provided to the ostensible “victims” du jour who are currently benefiting from communism and the favor of Karl Marx’s “dictatorship of the hired help.”

    THIS REFERENCE OF EQUITY IS THE PREVARICATING EQUIVOCATION OF DOUBLESPEAK.

    EQUITY IS NOT COMPENSATORY FUNDING OR ASSIGNMENT OF STATUS such as, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, public financial assistance welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, HHS, HUD, EPA, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc. All of the foregoing is utterly antithetical and unconstitutional in the free nation of the United States of America.

    EQUITY IS LITERALLY A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD WHERE EQUITABLE COMPETITION CREATES WINNERS AND LOSERS.

    EQUITY IS NOT COMPENSATION FOR THE INFERIOR OR LOSERS.
    ______________________________________________________________________

    Dictionary.com

    equity
    [ ek-wi-tee ]

    noun,plural eq·ui·ties.

    the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality: the equity of Solomon.

    something that is fair and just: The concepts and principles of health equities and inequities are important to society as a whole.
    ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Merriam-Webster

    equity
    noun
    eq·​ui·​ty ˈe-kwə-tē
    plural equities

    1 a : justice according to natural law or right

    – specifically : freedom from bias or favoritism

  4. Don’t know the answer, do know that at 17, 1970 joined the service, took the MOS 26L20F5, tactical microwave, third highest in the class got me another stripe from E3 to E4. Here it was when sent to Vietnam “To know what you’re doing as lives may be at risk if you do not” Not all of the class made it, those that could not grasp it were mustered off to 11B . . . Trust my life to those who get the participation award ‘A’? No Thank You.

  6. When I attended an Ivy League university many decades ago, this issue of grading did not exist — an F or a D was given if deserved.
    An A had to be earned in most cases. There were exceptions of course. My high school friends who got into Harvard told me that their freshman year was a nightmare of study, study, study — the professors assigned them 12 hours of work knowing full well they couldn’t accomplish it all. If they made it past freshman year, it became more manageable.

  7. Isn’t it past the time that Harvard and other top tier universities quit giving out free grades? Free from REAL academic work that is.
    Oh, are these A’s to keep the money rollin in from graduates? Hmmm, just another fraudulent woke university!

    1. “Students forget 95% of what they learn in high school after 3 days. Here’s how to help them study”

      – MyTuition.nz
      _________________

      “The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve”

      “German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus wanted to understand more about why we forget things and how to prevent it. His research produced the Forgetting Curve – a visual representation of the way that learned information fades over time (see figure 1, below). [1] Ebbinghaus experimented with his own ability to remember using a list of nonsense syllables, which he attempted to recall after different lengths of time. The Forgetting Curve, or the Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting, is an influential memory model. It shows how learned information slips out of our memories over time. The steepest drop in memory happens quickly after learning, so it’s important to revisit the information you’ve learned sooner rather than later.”

      – Mind Tools.com

      –

        1. I stand corrected.

          Fathera Guido Sarducci preceded Ebbinghausa by decadesa, if nota centuriesa!

    2. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

      In his experiments, he discovered that without any reinforcement or connections to prior knowledge, information is quickly forgotten—roughly 56 percent in one hour, 66 percent after a day, and 75 percent after six days.

  9. I’ve always had a problem with the way most schools grade. The purpose of the grade should be to objectively reflect the student’s grasp or mastery of the course material. Inadequate mastery of the material should in all cases garner a D/F irrespective of how other students in the class performed. Truly complete mastery of the material should result in an A, also regardless of other student’s performance. If all students truly mastered all the material, A’s all around. If none showed adequate mastery, then F’s for all is in order.
    Instead, most schools/teachers prefer to grade on a curve; meaning that a student’s score is a measurement of their performance relative to the average of the other students in that particular offering of the class. Traditionally, someone performing at the average level would receive a C, but in the circumstances described above, Harvard may have shifted the Average grade to an A-. I suppose the assumption is that statistically the curved/adjusted score will approximate the objective score. But I suspect that the assumption of corresponding scores is seldom justified with any hard evidence and is unlikely to hold true for a randomly selected student.
    The problem with grading on a curve, without considering competency, especially in conjunction with grade compression, is that it produces grades that have no practical value; to a parent, a future employer, or to the students themselves. It also obscures any proficiencies/deficiencies in the ability of the teacher to educate the students.
    I’d like to see a shift to objective, non-curved based grading. I believe that was the impetus behind the national standardized testing movement. But apparently that has also been attacked, probably because it exposed the poor performance of our schools too well.

  10. This may not be new to Harvard. It seems in the 90’s there was a similar scandal. This time may be like the past. Think of this: A harvard (lower case/class intended) A-student grad will likely be considered for higher paying positions. Let’s say this grad’s competition is either an A-student from a less “prestigious” school or a B-student from another Ivy League school. These other students legitimately earned their GPA’s. Who stands the better chance of being hired? harvard grad. In appreciation, these grads are able to give more money to the endowment association.

  11. This is not a new story. In 2013 Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield gave out two grades for each student, one for the school and one to the student. The student received the grade he actually earned, usually the lower of the two. Quite controversial at the time.
    Another observation: Since some 80% of Harvard students receive A grades, they must be, overall, the smartest students in the country. As such, they certainly know more than anyone else so opinions that do not align with their thinking must be wrong. Ergo, the FIRE rating of Zero!

  12. i’ve known about the Harvard grade inflation for decades, but didn’t realize that this inflation is looking more and more like the Weimar Republic when it comes to grade inflation. Hahvud is doing a great disservice to its students especially those who were admitted under affirmative action policies

  14. My grandfather mentioned that when he was a youth in the late 1800s the ‘usual’ level of education was 8th grade. Almost everyone could obtain an 8th grade diploma if they wanted one. The parents hired a teacher who ran a school. The best and brightest could pursue a high school education. Only about 1 in 3 even attempted high school and not everyone graduated. It was a real accomplishment. The next levels were rare indeed. A college diploma meant the student was a strong thinker. Graduate school, medical school, law school, and PhD’s meant a lot.
    The tale I tell my great-grandchildren is one of grade inflation in my day. The H.S. diploma the new 8th-grade. The college diploma the new H.S. The Master’s degree like the old college diploma, and so on.
    Now with a “college education” expected of all it is the new 8th grade. Diluted doctorates a dime a dozen.
    Just as with monetary inflation, grade inflation has reduced the value of each grade.

  15. The United States has 330 million people. I’m absolutely sure Harvard does not get all the smart ones. I went to Emory in the 1960’s No grade inflation. Every A was a war of attrition in the classroom and none were easy. I traveled to Harvard and others for 40. yrs for their Continuing Medical Education and Harvard has great courses but they were nowhere close to having a monopoly on great minds. Their grade inflation is not justified and simply leads to entitlement and Idiocracy. The world outside of Harvard will figure it out and eventually devalue their graduates as Harvard already does.

    1. Mother graduated Radcliffe summa cum laude. She was told by one teacher that the students were all guaranteed Bs, assuming they would do their work as required. You don’t get into one of the most elite universities in the world unless you are an outstanding student. The teacher’s intent was to ease their minds. The teacher had no doubt her pupils were more than capable of B level work. She was there to guide them into the wonders of the subject material.
      That’s where she met my father who attended Harvard with JFK and his baby brother, my uncle, played varsity football for the Crimson with RFK.
      Small world.

  16. So, teaching the freshman fall semester class on the calculus to a classroom of students all with scores of 800 on the SAT quant exam, what does the instructor expect of the students? That they rapidly acquire an excellent understanding of the Liebnitz-Newton calculus, able to complete correctly all examinations. Indeed at Harvard, MIT, Univ. of Chicago, and my school, CalTech, that is so. So indeed, everybody receives an A.

    At CalTech, I knew more of T.S. Elliot’s poems, more about him, than my English professor. He later thanked my performance my giving me a dictionary of synoymns. But I certainly worked for my good grades in mathematics and physics!

    1. Unlike anonymous ^^^ I didn’t find your comment braggy. The only thing I’d say as to its content is that a fall-semester freshman class on calculus will be difficult enough to get a range of grades if the grading is not inflated. This is particularly true of vector calculus which is where most of them will be since they’ll have taken AP calc in high school.

      1. Kansas Elder —- Vector calculus is a snap once one understands how to anti-differentiate, i.e., Riemann-Steljes integration.

  17. The grade distribution of any student body, including the student body at Harvard University, when honestly recorded and graphed will follow a Normal or Gaussian distribution, i.e., a bell curve, even if all of the students in the sample are above-average intellect, since there will be some that are smarter and some that are less smart.

    1. A nony mouse —- Yes, but the mean might be quite high and the variance tiny.

  18. I could see it for graduate level courses where selection criteria has already pulled the top 5% and they actually are capable of A’s

    1. Not sure about that. The material “should” presumably be even tougher. But it’s Harvard, so you may be right.

  19. This “leveling of the playing field” is only part of the indicia related to the dumbing down of America (and the Caucasian race, for that matter) as part of the global initiative to placate the larger (majority) domestic and global population of “average” persons.
    ( I have previously noted that there will always be more have-nots than haves, more followers than leaders, more copycatters than inventors/creators, more averages than achievers, etc. This is primarily the result of lack of incentive to achieve (when you can get the same reward by simply destroying the top tier) and the need for instant gratification/reward/attention)

    This goes hand in hand with
    (1)
    https://www.theblaze.com/news/algebra-1-effectively-eliminated-from-harvard-area-middle-schools-because-too-many-white-and-asian-students-were-taking-it-report
    (2)
    https://sd09.senate.ca.gov/news/newsom-signs-bill-banning-willful-defiance-suspensions-middle-high-school-students
    (which includes behaviors such as ignoring teacher’s requests, talking back to teachers, and willfully disrupting class)
    (…so much for in loco parentis…..)

    ….as well as schools dropping “honors” programs in the name of “equity.”

    lin.

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