A recent article in The Atlantic contained a notable account of the final meeting of the Spring 2024 semester for Harvard’s college faculty. As part of his annual report, then-Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana could not keep a straight face when reporting that the average grade at the school was now 3.8. As Khurana chuckled at the lunacy of an average of an A, the rest of the faculty joined in the laughter. It appears that, after years of runaway grade inflation, Harvard’s grading system has become a bad joke even among its own faculty.
All schools have experienced grade inflation, which is often mandated by grading curves that prevent faculty from assigning more accurate grades. Harvard has long been the leader in this race to the top. The ripple effect is that other schools have sought to match the generous grading to appease students who are used to such generous grading standards from high school. The result at Harvard is that the grading scale runs from A to A+.
Here is the account in the article:
During their final meeting of the spring 2024 semester, after an academic year marked by controversies, infighting, and the defenestration of the university president, Harvard’s faculty burst out laughing. As was tradition, the then-dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana, had been providing updates on the graduating class. When he got to GPA, Khurana couldn’t help but chuckle at how ludicrously high it was: about 3.8 on average. The rest of the room soon joined in, according to a professor present at the meeting.
They were cracking up not simply because grades had gotten so high but because they knew just how little students were doing to earn them.
Harvard is not alone. As we previously discussed, Yale was at 80 percent years ago. We also previously discussed how, at Spellman College, economics professor Kendrick Morales was fired after objecting to the school raising his grades without his consent, even after the grades were massively increased.Morales worked for two years at Spellman, teaching two upper-level courses. In one class, he added a 28-point grade bump for one test at the request of his department chair.
When students overall performed poorly on the final, Morales “pre-emptively” raised their scores by 36 points, so that a student receiving a 57 would receive an A. Yet, even with that increase, 44 percent of that class would still fail. Indeed, they had failed, but Morales says that Undergraduate Studies Dean Desiree Pedescleaux bumped up the students’ grades again without his approval.
Grade inflation is only the latest sign of how school administrators have lost control of universities and colleges. It also reflects a growing expectation among students for higher GPAs. Schools now attract applicants and professors attract students with assurances that virtually everyone will receive an A.
It is easy to say that this is the byproduct of the “trophy generation,” but this is not their fault. Years ago, I had an interesting conversation with one of my classes over this negative image and one student said that they never wanted participation trophies. She noted it was my generation that wanted them to have them, not the kids. Another student said that she would routinely throw away trophies as meaningless and insulting.
The same could well prove true for grades, which will become worthless and discarded if this trend continues. That will undermine the critical role of universities in evaluating student performance. That role not only helps future employers. It is even more important in offering students an accurate appraisal of their work. Often students will pursue degrees for the wrong reasons and not consider other fields that may be better suited to their talents and interests.
Harvard’s grading wipes out any distinctions between students in a system that only the character Syndrome would celebrate:
We are also producing future workers who have been coddled within a system that does little beyond praising and pandering them. Once they enter the workforce in an increasingly competitive market, they can find a shocker as their performance is actually measured and compared to others.
This generation of administrators and faculty have destroyed the credibility and integrity of higher education because it lacks the courage to maintain academic standards. Instead, faculty now just laugh at their own lunacy.
When John F. Kennedy was given an honorary degree at Yale, he quipped “it might be said now that I have the best of both worlds. A Harvard education and a Yale degree.” The question is whether the Harvard education or the Yale degree hold much distinction when you receive an A by just showing up to class.
The Trump presidency means that the Trump Administration will have the last laugh. And the investment that students are paying with their high cost of tuitions will not be wasted. Fournisseur IPTV
The tension between academic integrity and administrative pressure feels all too familiar. I once faced a milder version: a department quietly suggested adjusting a tough midterm curve after complaints escalated on social media and even in a campus connections game chat. I held the line, negotiated a partial regrade policy, and learned how fragile standards can become under institutional optics.
The Trump presidency means that the Trump Administration will have the last laugh. And the investment that students are paying with their high cost of tuitions will not be wasted.
This article is incorrect. Harvard’s actual average GPA is C-. Harvard’s math abilities are just so inadequate that they couldn’t perform the basic calculations necessary to determine the average GPA. As a cross check, Harvard asked Columbia’s, Yale’s, Penn’s, Cornell’s, Dartmouth’s, and even Stanford’s administrators to calculate Harvard’s average GPA, but none of them arrived at the same figure even though the data was the same.
Of course, Harvard can’t correctly calculate its own GPA, nor could the other so-called “educational” institutions. That’s because they’re not genuine educational institutions. Rather, they are all Leftist Indoctrination Entities (aka “LIEs”). They teach everything from a Marxist perspective and hence the students are merely mindless bots produced from their IslamoCommuNazi assembly lines. They are all depraved, degenerate, destructive, disgusting deviants.
Your points are inane and lack any veracity with such extremist right-wing expressions based on false statements. From what mind-expanding institution of higher education did you graduate?
Grade inflation also means that prospective employers will now totally ignore a student’s transcript as replete with worthless information.
I read an article about a Harvard professor who kept two sets of grades, one set was sent home(inflated grades) and the other set was his students real grades which he would produce when a prospective employer asked about a specific student. Even employers knew about the grade inflation at Harvard.
*. The grade inflation has been in practice for how many years? Degrees from Ivy leagues are worthless resulting in uneducated generations further degrading the United States?
When will schools be back producing? I see the reason it’s so funny. Ha ha
Watchdog Report: Two Largest Teachers Unions in U.S. Funneled $43.5 Million to Left-Wing Groups
[Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), speaks during the March on Wall Street on August 28, 2025 in New York City.]
The two largest teachers unions in the U.S. have dumped a combined $43.5 million into left-wing groups since 2022, according to a conservative watchdog group report.
National nonprofit group Defending Education released a report last week detailing the contributions of the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers to far-left groups and causes, citing disclosures to the Department of Labor, Fox News reported.
– Fox
I do not care who a union donates to.
What I care about is that unions of govenrment employees should not exist at all.
Even FDR understood that.
The best solution is for government to do less. Get rid of public schools – and if we are truly serious – get rid of govenrment subsidies.
A union donating to left-wing causes forces people who are moderate or conservative to donate to causes they disagree with. That is a form of coerced speech because it’s coerced funding of organizations who promote left-wing causes.
Where did the teachers get all those discretionary funds?
My guess would be, yet again, the American taxpayer.
I thought we paid them to educate our children.
Looks like the teachers were overpaid, at a minimum.
*. Or limit unions to wages, hours, conditions and term , duration of contract. Political activities are a diversion perpetrated upon the public by administration and management.
Teachers really don’t write textbooks or curriculum adopted by State Boards or laws regarding non English speakers, handicapped, discipline for conduct, transportation, 3 meals per day, and so much more. Lawsuits and legislation write those for the public.
As a matter of fact Ghislaine Maxwell’s father wrote or published American textbooks for many years.
What was the weekend like in Professor Turley’s hometown of Chicago, after Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson actively resisted Trump’s help in reducing crime?
32 separate shootings, in which 54 people were shot, and 7 were killed.
Do black lives matter? Much more to Trump than to Johnson or Pritzker. Actions speak louder than words.