Selective at the Door: Harvard's Proposal to Reclaim Academic Integrity
A senior at Harvard has penned a bold defense of his school's new proposal to fight rampant grade inflation for The Free Press. The plan caps A's at just 20% per undergraduate class and shifts academic honors from raw GPA to percentile rankings (or, how students stack up against their classmates). Why the new approach? Because over 60% of Harvard grades are now in the A-range, up from 25% two decades ago, creating grade compression, where true excellence is impossible to identify. Students are up in arms (if we go by an 85% rejection by survey), but the senior argues that this isn't punishment—it's restoring meaning to an A as “extraordinary distinction,” rather than a participation credit. He details how Harvard’s grade inflation has incubated a lowering of standards in a race to the bottom within a credential factory in which effort trumps quality. Harvard admits the best, but graduates them in a system where, “when everyone's super, no one will be.”
This should not be entirely surprising to those of us in education. It is, in fact, the predictable fruit of decades of drift away from merit and character formation, towards validation and comfort instead. Teachers themselves have long defended education as a forge for excellence, and not the participation trophy mill that too many administrators seem to want. Grade inflation at the supposed pinnacle of American academia exposes the hollowness of some modern equity obsessions; even the ultra-elite cannot maintain standards without a kind of academic coddling. It echoes a broader rejection of education's traditional rigor: disciplined mastery of texts, for example, or simply the idea that real growth demands discomfort. We can contextualize this within a broader decline of falling SAT scores, and a therapeutic culture in which feelings are prioritized over results. Restoring caps isn't radical. It’s a return to the unapologetic pursuit of truth and distinction that built institutions like Harvard in the first place.
That selectivity of admissions makes Harvard’s internal collapse even starker. Harvard was founded in 1636 primarily to train Puritan ministers, with entrance exams demanding proficiency in Latin, Greek, and Scripture—pure merit by the standards of the day. For centuries, student rankings at the college literally followed parents' social standing rather than academics, but by the 19th and early 20th centuries, it pivoted towards rigorous entrance exams and scholarly achievement. Post-WWII, it became fiercely meritocratic on paper, with acceptance rates hovering at just over 12% in the late 1990s. And today? Even lower, at under 4% (3.6% for the Class of 2028). Tens of thousands compete for a spot based on test scores and accomplishments, but once inside, the grading system erases any further differentiation. It's a bait-and-switch of brutal gatekeeping at admission, but a participation club within.
High grades must ultimately be exclusive and attainable only through genuine mastery. When A's become the default, feedback loses its bite—comments turn into empty praise instead of honest critique, and the classroom becomes an arena of negotiation rather than merit. True exclusivity upholds a teacher’s role as a fair and credible arbiter of excellence. While we genuinely value our students’ confidence and well-being, we cannot compromise academic integrity by issuing grades on request for the sake of their self-esteem. The point is, that exclusivity is not inherently a bad thing, even if 21st century culture has made it a sort of taboo. Exclusivity, it must be said, motivates real effort. Why teach at all if our standards are ignored? Educators aren't just graders. We’re guardians of civilization's knowledge, to a certain extent, and diluted grades betray the importance of that position and produce graduates who expect rewards without having earned them.
In the end, if Harvard—the world's most selective university—can't make an A mean something, what hope is there for the rest of us? What does it say about us when we select the brightest through brutal competition, only to hand them blue ribbons once inside?