Harvard University faculty voted Wednesday to cap the number of A grades awarded in undergraduate courses, a move the university described as a major step toward addressing decades of grade inflation.
The measure passed 458 to 201 and limits A grades to 20 percent of students in a class, plus four additional per course, according to CBS News. There is no cap on A minuses or lower grades. A separate measure that would have allowed individual courses to opt out of the cap was rejected, 364 to 292. The new policy takes effect in the fall of 2027 and will be reassessed after three years.
The change came after a university subcommittee found that A's had become so common as to be nearly meaningless. According to a university report, A grades accounted for 60 percent of all grades awarded to undergraduates in 2025, up from 40 percent in 2015 and 20 percent in 2005.
Employers and graduate school admissions offices had told the university that Harvard transcripts "no longer provide them useful information," the subcommittee said. In a statement, subcommittee members said the new policy means that "[a] Harvard A grade will now tell them, as well as employers and graduate schools, something real about what a student has achieved."
"Today the Harvard faculty voted to make their grades mean what they say they mean. For decades, grade inflation has been a collective-action problem: everyone saw it, but no one faculty member could fix it alone. The faculty have now taken a major step to fix it together," the subcommittee said.
Amanda Claybaugh, dean of undergraduate education, praised the vote. "This is a consequential vote. 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," Claybaugh said. "This vote is an important step toward ensuring that our grading system better serves its central purposes: giving students meaningful feedback, recognizing genuine distinction, and sustaining the academic mission of the College."
Not all students welcomed the change. Some told Boston television station WBZ-TV that they worried about the effect on classroom dynamics and graduate school admissions. "It just seems like more of a competition and it's like already a competition to be there," said student Abidah Shaikh. "I think it's just really harmful for like a classroom environment," said student Tallulah Paris.
Harvard Business School student Rachel Carp raised concerns about how graduate programs would respond. "I wonder if the med schools and the law schools and other sort of rigorous grad school programs would also understand, and potentially have a lower GPA expectation," Carp said.
