By Mickey Dunaway, Ed.D.

Associate Professor Emeritus

University of North Carolina — Charlotte

According to Forbes online, “In a new attempt to fight grade inflation, a Harvard faculty committee has recommended capping the number of A grades that could be handed out in every undergraduate class to 20%. 

Additionally, Forbes writes that Harvard also “[P]roposes ranking students by their percentile standing in each course, a numeric summary that would then be used in place of a grade point average to calculate internal university honors (https://www.forbes.com).”

If Harvard University truly believes that academic integrity can be restored by simply limiting “A” grades to 20 percent, and using percentile ranking of students in each course, then Harvard has mistaken image management for educational excellence.

That is not rigor. That is public relations dressed up as principle.

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The logic behind the policy is hard to defend. If Harvard admits some of the brightest, most academically accomplished students in the country—as Harvard has long implied—then one would naturally expect a larger-than-average number of those students to perform at an “A” level. That should not be surprising. It should be expected.

So, when a university decides that “too many” students are earning top grades, the problem may not be grade inflation at all. The real problem may be that Harvard is embarrassed by what those grades look like to other “elites.”

In plain English: this appears to be less about learning and more about appearances.

And that is where Harvard goes wrong.

Grades should reflect demonstrated mastery of content—not a quota, not a curve designed to impress outsiders, and certainly not a politically convenient number pulled from the air. If 20 percent of students earn an “A,” fine. If 40 percent earn an “A,” and they have truly mastered the material, then that is also fine. The number itself should never be the point.

I say that not as an Ivy League insider, but as an Alabama public school graduate who later earned three higher education degrees from Alabama public universities and spent nearly 36 years in K–12 education and another 15 years teaching at a public university.

And I will say this plainly: some of the finest teachers and most serious assessors of learning I have ever known worked in public education.

The issue is not whether a school is prestigious. The issue is whether it is honest.

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When I taught, I believed my responsibility was to help students master what they were supposed to learn—not to sort them artificially into percentages that would make my institution look more rigorous.

That meant being clear from the start. Students needed to know exactly what they were expected to learn. They needed to know what would be assessed. Their assignments had to match instruction. Their assessments had to match what had actually been taught. And if they did not yet demonstrate mastery, then they needed more opportunities to learn, improve, and show what they knew.

That is what integrity in education looks like.

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A sound teacher at any level should know four things: the subject matter, the science of teaching and learning, the principles of fair assessment, and the human responsibility to care whether students succeed.

That is the standard.

What is not the standard is deciding ahead of time that only a certain percentage of students may excel, regardless of whether they actually have.

That is not fairness. It is an example of pitch being more important than performance.

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I worked hard as an assistant professor. I met the expectations of research and publication, earned tenure, and retired as an Associate Professor Emeritus. But my real work was always with students—teaching them, assessing them fairly, advising them, and in many cases helping them long after graduation.

That is why Harvard’s proposal strikes me as so backward. It confuses institutional status with educational truth.

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In contrast to Harvard, I am reminded of the values found in Auburn Creed, a document that has guided Auburn University and its students since 1943 when it was penned by Dr. Dr. George Petrie. Dr. Petrie was the first Alabamian to earn a Ph.D. He graduated from John Hopkins University in 1890. Petrie held various positions at Auburn, including professor of history and Latin, head of the History Department, and dean of the Graduate School. He also organized and served as Auburn’s first football coach.

The values of the Auburn Creed continue to resonate loudly with Auburn people today. 

Its values are simple and durable: hard work, honesty, truthfulness, respect, discipline, and humility.

Those values do not require manipulation.

They do not require quotas.

And they certainly do not require elite institutions to pretend rigor by suppressing excellence.

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If Harvard wants to restore confidence in its academic standards, it should start with something much more difficult than a grade cap.

It should start with honesty.

Because the integrity of a university is not measured by how many “A” grades it can keep off a transcript. It is measured by whether the grades it gives are earned.

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You can read the Auburn Creed at https://auburn.edu/about/creed.php.