Faculty members at Harvard University voted in recent days to cap the number of top grades they are permitted to award to undergraduate students, in an attempt to reduce grade inflation at one of America’s most prestigious colleges.
The new policy will limit A’s to 20 percent of the letter grades awarded in a course, with an allowance for as many as four additional A’s. Faculty voted on the proposal this month, and the results were announced Wednesday.
In a course with 100 students, for example, a professor would be permitted to award up to 24 A’s. There is no limit on grades of A-minus or lower, and the cap applies only to undergraduates.
The vote was 458 in favor, 201 against.
“This is a consequential vote,” Amanda Claybaugh, the dean of undergraduate education, said in a statement. “It will, I believe, strengthen the academic culture of Harvard; it will also, I hope, encourage other institutions to confront similar questions with the same level of rigor and courage.”
Grades at Harvard have been creeping upward for decades. In the 2024-25 school year, about two-thirds of undergraduate letter grades were A’s, a distinction that is supposed to be reserved for extraordinary work, according to the student handbook.
A little over a decade earlier, in 2012-13, just 35 percent of Harvard letter grades were A’s.
Grade inflation is a national problem that experts say reduces the value of grades. If most students get an A, grades become less valuable to employers, graduate school admissions officers and the students themselves as measures of their subject mastery.
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