Harvard Faculty Votes to Limit A Grades for Undergraduates

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted earlier this month to limit the number of A grades awarded to undergraduates. The policy allows instructors in letter-graded courses to award A grades to no more than 20 percent of students in a class, plus four additional students. Other grades, including A-minuses, remain unlimited.

More than 60 percent of all grades awarded to undergraduates in recent years were in the A range, according to university data cited by faculty members who supported the measure. D. programs.

" — Members of the faculty subcommittee that proposed the changes, May 20, 2026 (NBC News) Harvard government professor Alisha Holland, co-chair of the faculty subcommittee, said faculty viewed the change as a “pro-student reform” intended to restore meaning to Harvard transcripts.

” A February survey of students conducted by the association found that nearly 85 percent of roughly 800 responding undergraduates opposed the proposal.

The university plans to implement the policy in the academic year beginning in 2027. The new policies will be reviewed after three years. Faculty also approved a proposal to use average percentile rank rather than GPA when comparing students for honors, prizes and awards.

A separate proposal that would have allowed courses to opt out of the A-grade cap by switching to a satisfactory/unsatisfactory system failed. ” Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, called grade inflation a “complex and thorny issue” and a “problem that many people have recognized, but no one has solved.