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Today, we’re talking about what it means to be a straight-A student — at Harvard, no less. More than half of all course grades earned by Harvard undergraduates during the 2024-25 academic year were As. That the students who end up at Harvard tend to be high-achieving is not new or surprising — after all, they need plenty of As just to get in. But 20 years ago, only a quarter of grades given to Harvard undergraduates were As. So what happened?
We’ll dig into that below. But first, the news.
Four Things to Know
1. Jeffrey MacDonald, of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, was arraigned Thursday in connection with the murder of his wife Wednesday night inside a hotel on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Both MacDonald and his wife were employees of UMass Amherst, according to a statement from the Northwest District Attorney’s office. Thursday morning, in Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown, MacDonald pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and one count of assault and battery on a police officer.
2. Dozens of frustrated residents criticized Mayor Michelle Wu during a hearing this week over stalled transportation projects they say would make public streets safer. The Boston City Council’s Committee on Planning, Development and Transportation, chaired by District 8 Councilor Sharon Durkan, held an oversight hearing focused on projects that have been paused for more than a year without updates on their progress. “A year of paused bike lane projects and silence is unacceptable,” said Matthias Iris Remillard, who identified himself as a former Wu campaign volunteer who voted for the mayor twice before moving to Somerville.
3. A person infected with measles flew into Boston’s Logan Airport last week. The individual arrived at Logan’s Terminal C from Fort Lauderdale, Florida shortly after midnight on April 14, according to the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. “Measles can stay in an environment for two hours after an individual leaves that area,” said Kayty Himmelstein, the medical director for the Boston Public Health Commission’s Infectious Disease Bureau. “We are wanting to alert folks who may have been in Logan Airport between midnight and 2:30 a.m. on April 14 that they may have been exposed to measles.”
4.The National Urban League hopes Massachusetts will be the next state to pass what’s known as clean slate legislation, which would automatically seal records for certain eligible candidates. Thirteen states have already enacted similar measures, but prior attempts to pass the legislation in Massachusetts have stalled in recent years. Rahsaan Hall, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, said state law already allows some criminal records to be sealed, but clean slate bills would automate the process.
With rampant grade inflation, could Harvard make an ‘A’ mean something again?
Next month, Harvard faculty members will vote on whether they think the university should limit the number of students in each course who can receive an A to 20 percent of the class, plus four students. Another proposal would allow professors to give their students grades of “unsatisfactory,” “satisfactory” or “satisfactory-plus” instead of letter grades.
The idea is to give faculty a way to set top-performing students apart, especially as they apply to jobs or graduate programs. Harvard senior Alexandria Westray doesn’t necessarily see that. “It’s a farce to say that there’s nothing distinguishing Harvard students just because we all have As,” Westray said. “I think everybody I know here works extremely hard.”
GBH’s Kirk Carapezza found that limiting grade inflation is something other schools have tried before: in 2004, Wellesley College started encouraging professors to aim for an average grade of B-plus.
Akila Weerapana, who chairs Wellesley’s economics department, studied what happened next: lower average grades in social sciences and the humanities, lower student ratings for professors and lower enrollment in majors like English, history and philosophy. “It became known as the grade ‘deflation’ policy, which immediately suggests, ‘I’m getting a grade lower than what I deserve,’” Weerapana told Carapezza. Under pressure from students and their tuition-paying parents, Wellesley eventually dropped the B-plus average push.
Harvard government professor Steven Levitsky said he’d support the push for fewer As, in part to teach students that they can’t always expect perfection. “I can give an A-minus and almost inevitably face a bitching, whining, complaining, entitled student in my office,” he told Carapezza. “Or I can give an A and not have to bother, and I can get back to my work.”
Dig deeper:
-College Uncovered: What happens when a college closes?
-How a small college near Boston is serving low-income, first-generation students
-Poll shows most Massachusetts K-12 students have used AI for schoolwork
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