Harvard Says It’s Handing Out Too Many A’s. Students Are Fighting Back.

Report from Ivy League school finds rampant grade inflation, but students complain administration is moving goal posts

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The last time Jake Kamnikar remembers receiving anything other than an A on his transcript was in third-grade art class. He is now a freshman at Harvard.


That streak could end soon.


A recent internal report found that Harvard is dishing out too many A’s, and that the current undergrad system is “failing to perform the key functions of grading” and “damaging the academic culture of the College more generally.”


The report prompted uproar from some Harvard students who say they already study a lot, sleep very little and face immense stress to perform academically. Many feel they worked hard to get into Harvard, only for the school to contemplate moving the goal posts.


“You admitted these students because they have straight A’s, and now they’re getting a lot of A’s, and it’s, like, ‘This is a problem.’ And I’m thinking, how on earth is that a problem?” said Summer Tan, a Harvard senior.


Harvard’s report on its undergraduate college found that about 60% of grades were A’s during the 2024-25 school year, a jump from about 25% in 2005-06. The median GPA upon graduation is now 3.83, up from 3.29 in 1985.


The average time students spend studying outside class has barely changed, from 6.08 hours a week for each of their courses in fall 2006 to 6.3 hours this spring, according to the report by Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education. New faculty reported surprise at how lenient grading is, and nearly all expressed “serious concern” about grade inflation.


Making the Grade


An internal report showed Harvard College is giving out more ‘A’ grades and students are graduating with higher GPAs.


“We’re not trying to make Harvard something that it’s not,” Claybaugh said in an interview. “We’re trying to bring it back to what it was when it was really at its best.”


The report includes recommendations to curb grade inflation and restore rigor. Harvard is considering introducing a limited number of A-plus grades, and displaying the median grade for every course on transcripts to provide more context to employers and admissions committees. 


Students have bashed and bemoaned the report across campus. One told the student newspaper she was crying “the whole entire day.” Some cited the college’s increased selectivity in admissions as justification for higher grades.


One challenge in addressing grade inflation, particularly for professors, is the fear that cracking down could send enrollment plummeting. Claybaugh plans to host a dinner with faculty to discuss grading plans, and has encouraged them to revert to how they graded 10 years ago.


Steven Pinker, a professor who teaches an introductory psychology course, said he has felt compelled to inflate grades at a similar rate to the collegewide data, even though he believes student performance has sunk. 


Pinker has given a similar final exam since 2003, and now sees students score 10 percentage points lower on the multiple-choice portion. (He doesn’t know whether his sample group is the same, though: It is possible better students now are skipping his course in favor of a neuroscience one).


“A course with a reputation for a tough grading distribution will repel students,” Pinker said. “Everyone has an incentive to keep inflating grades unless everyone else stops simultaneously.” A separate study published by Harvard this spring, however, found that course difficulty and grades had a minimal effect on the scores students gave instructors on evaluations.


Many students recognize both sides of the grade-inflation argument. Alfred Williamson sees a disparity between his two majors. He said he has coasted through some classes for his government major, but has to work harder in his physics major.


“The classes where you can get away with not doing readings and not studying and not engaging in discussions, and still do well—that’s the real problem,” said Williamson, a sophomore.


But too much rigor disincentivizes academic exploration, students say. Williamson thought twice about majoring in physics because he worried it could lower his GPA and prove challenging if he applies to law school.


Tan, the college senior who had straight A’s in high school, said she sleeps about six hours per night, though during some stretches of college it has been three or four. She is juggling a part-time job at an ice-cream shop and about 35 hours a week as vice president of a campus politics center, among other extracurriculars.


“It’s not like I’ve managed to breeze my way through Harvard,” she said, pointing to B’s and some humanities courses with heavy reading loads.


Kamnikar, the freshman and economics and psychology double-major, thinks Harvard students should expect to be held to higher standards. But, he added that “learning should be inquisitive and not unnecessarily stressful or demanding.”


The root of Harvard students’ stress is generally their ambition, Claybaugh said. “When they weren’t all getting A’s, they were stressed. And now that they are all getting A’s, they are still stressed,” she said.


Grade inflation isn’t confined to Harvard; the problem has drawn President Trump’s scrutiny. He asked colleges to “commit to grade integrity” in his administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” an agreement it wants universities to sign in exchange for federal-funding advantages.


“It has reached a comical level of inflation,” said Christopher Schorr, director of the higher-education reform initiative at America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.


Princeton University capped the number of A’s starting in 2004, but discontinued that practice after finding the policy increased stress, among other issues. Other schools didn’t follow suit, creating uneven comparisons for graduates.


Experts hope that this time around other schools will follow Harvard. Claybaugh said she has heard from peer institutions since the report was released.


In any case, the debate has been raging for years. In 1894, less than a decade after the grading system was put into place, a standards committee at Harvard said that A’s and B’s were sometimes given “too readily.”


Write to Roshan Fernandez at roshan.fernandez@wsj.com


Corrections & Amplifications
Harvard students spent an average of 6.3 hours a week this spring studying outside of class for each of their courses, compared with 6.08 hours a week in fall 2006. An earlier version of this article incorrectly failed to state that the weekly study hours are per course. (Corrected on Nov. 12.)



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Where Liberty and Learning Endure

June 29, 2026
As America commemorates 250 years of independence, we reflect on the enduring principles of liberty and learning that have defined Davidson College for nearly two centuries.

Bankruptcy and Higher Education

June 21, 2026
By Todd Zywicki The Wall Street Journal June 21, 2026 Auburn University is known for its agricultural and STEM programs, its flight school and athletic programs. But the land-grant university recently became notable for another reason: The board of trustees is taking control of the school back from its faculty. The board began seizing the university’s academic programs—including curriculum, course offerings, degree requirements and academic credentials—at its June 5 meeting. The board also dissolved the faculty senate and replaced it with an advisory council to the president, which includes two faculty members from each of the university’s colleges and additional members appointed by the president. The board’s assertion of authority mirrors incoming mandates by the Alabama Legislature restricting the role of faculty senates in the state’s public university system. Predictably, Auburn’s faculty has responded with howls of outrage, decrying these intrusions on the faculty’s authority over academic operations. How could outsiders appointed through a political process have the expertise to make such delicate decisions? I’ve been a professor at a state university for almost 30 years, and I am sympathetic up to a point. But before becoming a professor I was a bankruptcy lawyer. And bankruptcy law teaches an important lesson for how academia can respond to this moment. Bankruptcy gives businesses an opportunity to admit mistakes, reform and emerge stronger. Successful enterprises don’t need bankruptcy lawyers. But when an enterprise loses its way, it goes into receivership. Most universities aren’t financially bankrupt but have lost their mission and direction. Society has long recognized certain institutions’ authority to manage their own affairs. Two notable examples are licensed professionals—such as doctors and lawyers—and universities. Universities, even state universities, have run their enterprises with minimal external oversight. Faculties enjoyed substantial rights of self-governance because they committed to higher standards than those required by ordinary jobs. Professors would establish and maintain standards of scholarly integrity, freedom of speech and inquiry, and rigorous dedication to merit-based assessment of research in specialized areas. They policed their own house, enforcing norms of truth-seeking, maintaining scholarly integrity and rigor, and ensuring that students emerged with basic knowledge, employable skills and civic competency. But over the past several decades, commitment to those values collapsed. Surveys by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently reveal fear among students and faculty around expressing unfashionable ideas. Universities have seen shout-downs, cancellations and even violence against speakers. Merit and quality yielded to “diversity” and “equity.” Truth-seeking has been displaced by faddish theories and ideologically charged teaching and research. Professors design esoteric departments and teach niche classes to cliques of activist students while the needs of other students and taxpayers for real education go unaddressed. Like companies I represented, universities have lost their way. And many have proved either unable or unwilling to self-correct. When that happens, it is appropriate to put institutions into receivership until they reform and rededicate themselves to their mission. At Auburn incoming students must now take certain required civics and history courses to master basic competency in U.S. history and government. To ensure the classes actually meet that objective, professors will have to make their syllabi publicly available. In the classroom, instructors will be expected to stick to the matter at hand and avoid free-ranging political punditry. Just as other companies can learn from the ones that go bankrupt, other institutions of higher education can learn something from Auburn: Fix what’s broken, or someone else might fix it for you. Mr. Zywicki is a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He was a Dartmouth College trustee, 2005-09. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bankruptcy-and-higher-education-4c2b178e

Race Preferences Are Falling Nationwide

June 19, 2026
By the Editorial Board The Wall Street Journal June 19, 2026 The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against racial preferences is turning out to be a landmark with profound consequences as its influence spreads. On Thursday the famously progressive Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a state program that issued scholarships based on race violates the U.S. Constitution. Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the court that the Constitution requires “that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,’” and that the state cannot “use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.” That must have been painful for the activist liberal majority on the court. In a concurrence, Wisconsin Chief Justice Jill Karofsky took some shots at Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College (2023) before acknowledging that “I am bound by the precedent set forth in SFFA” and other Supreme Court rulings “when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.” The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty against a 1985 Badger State law that reserved need-based scholarships through a grant program for “Black American,” “American Indian,” “Hispanic” and some Southeast Asian undergraduate students enrolled in Wisconsin’s private and technical colleges. Last week the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a scholarship program earmarked for black University of Iowa students studying physical sciences was “impracticable” under SFFA. State governments would be wise to repeal these discriminatory grant programs, or the courts will do it for them.
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