Many readers were excited about our recent Big Idea on Harvard College's renewed push for academic rigor. But many also asked: why hasn't this been solved already?
It's a complicated question, and we'll start with one aspect: grade inflation — a collective action problem with deep roots.
This week, we unpack the internal incentives that sustain inflated grades. Next week, we'll show how those incentives add up to a collective action challenge that plays out not only within Harvard, but across universities competing with one another.
Part I: The Incentives Behind Harvard's Easy A's
As we previously covered, Harvard College took a commendable step by addressing this issue openly in The Atlantic last month when Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh explained how Harvard's grading system ended up with "pretty much everyone" earning A's, and signaled that the College is preparing reforms.
The numbers bear her out. The Class of 2025 had an average GPA of 3.8. In a Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) survey, nearly 80% of responding professors said grade inflation is a problem, and 70% said students don't sufficiently prioritize coursework. A January 2025 report from the Classroom Social Compact Committee (CSCC) highlighted similar concerns, noting that students "often don't attend class" and prioritize extracurriculars over academics.
Grade inflation at Harvard isn't new (The Boston Globe covered it in the early 2000s), but it has intensified. Grades play a vital role by motivating learning, distinguishing achievement levels, and giving feedback on mastery. What's striking is not discovery of inflation, but its persistence despite repeated scrutiny from professors, committees, and the press.
That persistence reflects incentives across the Harvard ecosystem:
Students face pressure to stand out beyond transcripts and to learn what coursework does not provide. "The only thing hard about Harvard is getting in," as the saying goes. With A's everywhere, GPA loses value as a signal. This pushes students toward a "shadow system of distinction" through selective clubs, résumé-stacking leadership roles, and pre-professional pipelines to stand out. For consulting and finance careers especially, students report that the real training happens outside class, making coursework feel less relevant. Increased stress and mental health counseling make easier coursework not just attractive, but necessary, in students' minds.
Employers and graduate schools turn elsewhere to evaluate candidates. With transcripts full of A's, they rely more on extracurricular leadership, research, and recommendations to distinguish candidates, reinforcing the shift away from classroom performance as the main measure of success.
Non-tenured and tenure-track instructors feel pressure from student feedback and enrollment. For preceptors and lecturers, contract renewals consider course evaluations, making tough grading (and the risk of negative feedback) a potential threat to continued employment. The CSCC noted a similar dynamic among Teaching Fellows, some of whom "grade too easily because they fear negative student feedback." Tenure-track professors feel subtler but related incentives, since course reviews and enrollment numbers also factor into promotions (at least on paper).
Tenured faculty face potential headwinds and declining enrollment if they grade strictly. Claybaugh told The Atlantic that administrators frequently reminded faculty of students' fragile mental health — a message many interpreted as pressure to ease grading standards. Even Steven Pinker, one of Harvard's most prominent professors, says he feels compelled to inflate grades to keep enrollments high. Two decades ago, only a quarter of his intro psych students earned A-range grades; today, nearly two-thirds do. And while tenured professors may have the job security to teach as they please, many still care deeply about teaching a large number of students. If someone as established as Pinker feels grade inflation pressure, it's little surprise that many other faculty do too.
Some departments also fear tougher grading will drive students to other fields. In 2023, The Crimson reported that 79% of grades awarded in 2020-21 were in the A range, with the highest shares in the Arts and Humanities (79%) compared to 60-65% in Sciences and SEAS. For smaller departments, a drop in enrollment can mean fewer concentrators and tighter budgets, making the risk of stricter grading feel especially acute.
Administrators respond to student demand for satisfaction over rigor. With three in five students nationally viewing themselves as customers, administrators face pressure to keep the "customer" happy. That can mean adopting policies meant to ease stress even when it comes at the expense of academic standards. Yet in practice, fueling grade inflation only deepens stress by further reinforcing the "shadow system of distinction."
Each group's incentives and behavior reinforce the others, making unilateral fixes difficult and grade inflation hard to dislodge. The challenge isn't ignorance of the problem, but difficulty of moving an actor without thoughtful, coordinated change. Even so, progress doesn't require perfect alignment of every incentive at once, and even partial coordination could shift the dynamic for the better.
Next week, we'll turn to what that coordination might look like, and how Harvard's individual challenges reflect a broader collective action problem across higher education.
Ask 1636
Each week, we answer a reader question about Harvard and higher education. Send your questions our way!
Q: FIRE found 32% of Harvard students say political violence is acceptable in at least rare cases. Does that mean a third supports violence like the Charlie Kirk assassination?
1636’s Take: Not exactly. In our fireside chat with FIRE’s Conor Murnane (campus advocacy chief of staff) and Sean Stevens (chief research advisor), they cautioned against reading the stat as students endorsing assassination-level violence. The survey was conducted well before Kirk’s killing, and FIRE noted that students may have interpreted the question as a hypothetical about whether violence could ever be acceptable in the abstract, rather than about what they themselves would do. Stevens said he doubted many had something as extreme as assassination in mind. Still, both stressed that “rarely” is troubling — the only acceptable answer is “never,” as with shouting down speakers or blocking entry to events. They added that confusion over protest rights likely drives some of these responses. Harvard’s figure was close to the national average, with several schools scoring considerably higher.
Events
Cambridge, MA — October 8 from 12:20-1:20 p.m. ET: As part of HLS Beyond, Harvard psychology professor Joshua Greene will introduce Tango, a cooperative quiz game designed to reduce political animosity. At Harvard College’s orientation in August, more than 1,000 students played Tango and reported high enjoyment along with greater openness to opposing views. Register here.
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FYIs
HHS Moves to Bar Harvard From Future Federal Funding Over Antisemitism Violations
The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced it is referring Harvard for a formal suspension and debarment proceeding. If upheld, Harvard would no longer be eligible for future federal grants and contracts.
OCR said the referral follows Harvard’s earlier Notice of Violation under Title VI, which found the University acted with “deliberate indifference” toward antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli students since October 2023, a development we covered in a special edition.
OCR Director Paula Stannard said Harvard has 20 days to request a “formal administrative hearing, where an HHS administrative law judge will make an impartial determination on whether Harvard violated Title VI.”
Separately, OCR has referred Harvard for review under HHS’s Suspension and Debarment Program, which can bar entities deemed “not responsible” from doing business with any federal agency (not just HHS).
The referral comes less than a month after Judge Allison Burroughs ordered the government to restore Harvard’s existing research funding. Immediately after her ruling, a White House spokesperson said that Harvard remains ineligible for future grants. Most recently, the government released $46 million in withheld National Institutes of Health grants — a small share of the University’s $3.2 billion in frozen federal research funding.
HSPH Faces Ongoing Funding Crisis, Possible Tenure-Track Layoffs
Harvard’s School of Public Health (HSPH) is confronting what Dean Andrea Baccarelli called “a painful process” of layoffs and cuts as it braces for an annual loss of roughly $100 million in federal research funding, or nearly half its budget, even if current federal research grants are fully restored by Judge Burroughs’s court order.
A school spokesperson explained that the $100 million shortfall reflects anticipated future losses as federal priorities shift away from public health research and as federal policymakers weigh new caps on indirect cost reimbursements.
As part of HSPH’s austerity measures, three tenure-track junior faculty have been told they face termination within 12 months unless new funding emerges — a step tenured professors described as unprecedented.
Other cuts include “significant” staff layoffs, shelving research projects, and halving the incoming PhD class (65 to 37 students). To increase its number of doctoral students, HSPH is in “active conversations” with at least six companies to sponsor more.
HSPH is Harvard’s most federal funding-dependent school relative to its endowment. In August, Dean Baccarelli said he is “no longer thinking about how we save the school,” but instead how to build “a school of the highest quality, probably smaller in size.”
HSPH Dean Paid $150K for Tylenol Expert Witness Testimony
HSPH dean Andrea Baccarelli was paid about $150,000 in 2023 to serve as an expert witness in lawsuits alleging Tylenol use during pregnancy causes autism. His involvement resurfaced after federal officials cited his 2025 review of 46 studies, which found an association between acetaminophen and autism and ADHD, to claim there is a causal link.
In his 2023 expert report for the lawsuit, he asserted that “substantial evidence supports a strong, positive, causal association.” Last week he struck a more cautious note, saying, “Further research is needed to confirm the association and determine causality, but based on existing evidence, I believe that caution about acetaminophen use during pregnancy — especially heavy or prolonged use — is warranted.”
Baccarelli testified in summer 2023 while still a professor at Columbia and was named the next dean of HSPH that October by then-President Claudine Gay.
House Antisemitism Inquiry Seeks Harvard Records, With Focus on HBS
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce sent a letter Monday to President Alan Garber as part of its ongoing investigation into antisemitism at Harvard, requesting an extensive set of documents and communications by October 13.
The Committee is seeking records related to several Harvard Business School-specific issues: the October 2023 protest altercation resulting in the Suffolk County DA filing charges for assault and battery of an Israeli HBS student (and alleged failure to discipline the Harvard students involved); President Garber counseling HBS Dean Srikant Datar against issuing a community message afterward, with Datar noting that Middle Eastern and North African students “will be very upset by it”; and HBS’s failure to release its Antisemitism Working Group report.
Lawmakers also pointed out that one of the assailants, Ibrahim Barmal (JD ‘25, MPP ‘25), later received a $65,000 Law Review fellowship. (The Committee’s letter incorrectly said Bharmal was Law Review president.)
Beyond HBS, the Committee seeks documents on Harvard’s ties to Birzeit University, deans’ action plans following the University’s Antisemitism Task Force report findings, and communications from the central DEI office regarding antisemitism since Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Unexpected Tenure Denial in Harvard’s Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program Draws Faculty Criticism
Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGS) associate professor Durba Mitra was denied tenure in June and must leave Harvard within a year. With two books, multiple mentorship awards, and a leadership role at a Harvard research library, other faculty viewed Mitra as a “practically perfect candidate for tenure.”
Mitra reportedly cleared departmental and faculty-wide committees with “overwhelmingly positive” reviews before her case was sent to an ad hoc review led by Provost John Manning (AB ’82). Recent data indicates only about 70% of tenure-track professors at Harvard are granted tenure, compared to about 44% in 2005.
Some faculty say the case raises new doubts about Harvard’s tenure system. History professor Maya Jasanoff said she “no longer [feels] confident in the robustness of our tenure-track system,” while history professor Kirsten Weld added that she would now advise junior colleagues to accept outside tenure offers if they receive them, rather than trust Harvard’s tenure review process.
More News
More News at Harvard:
The Crimson: “Penny Pritzker Says She Has ‘Absolutely No Idea’ How Trump Talks Will Conclude”
The Crimson: “What Can the Trump Administration Do With Harvard’s Race Data?”
The Crimson: “David Deming Tries To Be Straightforward. His New Job Is Anything But.”
The Crimson: “6 Months Behind Schedule, Harvard Endowment’s Annual Climate Report Is Nowhere to be Seen”
The Crimson: “HKS Student Government Candidates Vow Support For International Students at Debate”
New America: “Heightened Cash Monitoring Weaponized: Failing Schools Skirt Scrutiny, Harvard Takes the Blow”
The Crimson: “Harvard Can’t Force Discourse” — op-ed by Margot Cerbone (AB ’28)
The Crimson: “Harvard Should Teach Speech” — op-ed by Amelia Barnum (AB ’28)
The Crimson: “Can Harvard Cure Science’s Mistrust Epidemic?” — op-ed by Ambika Grover (AB ‘27)
The Crimson: “What Happened to HBS’s ‘Highest Aspirations’?” — editorial by The Crimson Editorial Board
The Crimson: “To The Editor: We Will Not Return to a Crushable Conservatism” — letter to the editor by Richard Rodgers (AB ’28), editor-in-chief of The Harvard Salient
The Crimson: “Harvard’s Hazing Policy Has Gone Too Far” — editorial by The Crimson Editorial Board
More News Beyond Harvard:
Yale Daily News: “Yale’s endowment spending rate to remain stable despite tax hike”
Brown Daily Herald: “University to lay off 48 employees, eliminate 55 unfilled positions”
The Tech (MIT): “We Condemn Violent Responses to Free Expression” — statement by MIT’s faculty Council on Academic Freedom
The Guardian: “Northwestern students blocked from enrollment after refusing controversial antisemitism training”
Jewish Insider: “Cornell suspends professor who excluded Israeli student from class on Gaza”
Higher Ed Dive: “Most adults say higher education is important but want colleges to stay out of politics”
New York Times: “What Declines in Reading and Math Mean for the U.S. Work Force”
New York Times: “U.S. News Rankings Are Out After a Tumultuous Year for Colleges”
Inside Higher Ed: “Colleges Hope Tuition Guarantees Will Open Doors to Lower-Income Students”
Yale Daily News: “Two trustees meet students ahead of year’s first board meeting”
Inside Higher Ed: “International Enrollment Down at Regional Publics, Small Private Colleges”
New York Times: “Can College Students Stand to Ditch Their Phones for an Hour or So?”
Inside Higher Ed: “Vanderbilt Eyes National Expansion”
Mother Jones: “How America’s Elite Colleges Breed High-Status Careers—and Misery”
The Eternally Radical Idea: “Ten years after ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’: What we warned, what happened, and what’s still at stake” — by FIRE president Greg Lukianoff
Wall Street Journal: “Is Gen Z Unemployable?” — op-ed by NYU Stern Professor Suzy Welch (AB ‘81, MBA ‘88)
Inside Higher Ed: “What’s So Conservative About Civics, Anyway?” — by Eric Hartman, Director, Executive Doctorate in Higher Education Management, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education
Free the Inquiry: “Dangerous Ideas Needed” — by Michael Regnier, Executive Director of Heterodox Academy