A’s Have Been Harvard’s Most Common Grade for 20 Years

In the last few days, reports that Harvard’s most common grade is an “A” have  now gone viral. But despite the shocked-shocked! tone of some of the coverage, this is actually very old news.

The last time A-range (that is, the combination of A and A-) grades or their equivalent were not the most common grades awarded at Harvard was 20 years ago, according to Stuart Rojstaczer (who tracks and aggregates grading data at colleges, including some data going back to prewar times. (You may recall he previously answered your questions on grade inflation here).

He used the term “equivalent” because Harvard converted from a 15-point grading system to a conventional A-F system in the 2000s. Harvard defined its “15″ as an A and its “14″ as an A-, Dr. Rojstaczer explained in an email.

Dr. Rojstaczer wrote that as of the 1989-90 academic year, A- was the grade most commonly awarded to undergraduates at Harvard. By 2000-01, A- was very close to being replaced by A (within 1.3 percent) as the modal grade (that is, the grade that appears with the most frequency). The A-range combination of A/A- became the modal grade (in comparison to B+/B/B-) in the 1994-95 academic year.

Clutching your pearls yet? Bear in mind that nationally, the A/A- combination has been the most common grade awarded nationwide at colleges since 1997.

“So Harvard was only about three years ahead of its time,” Dr. Rojstaczer wrote.

Credit: Stuart Rojstaczer & Christopher Healy, “Where A Is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940-2009,” Teachers College Record.n Note: 1940 and 1950 (nonconnected data points in figure) represent averages from 1935 to 1944 and 1945 to 1954,respectively. Data from 1960 onward represent annual averages in grade database, smoothed with a three-year centered moving average.

Dr. Rojstaczer said the Harvard data “come from the dean’s office by way of request to Larry Summers,” the university’s president until 2006. “Since Larry Summers resigned, Harvard has refused all requests for data.”

For some other coverage of grades and grade inflation, see this post on how private colleges have inflated marks the most; this item on how Republican- versus Democratic-leaning professors grade their students; an article about how law school grading curves were being deliberately softened so graduates would be more competitive on the tough job market; and this post puzzling through why college has gotten less rigorous, but the college degree earnings premium has risen all the same.