Harvard faculty take aim at grade inflation by capping ‘A’ grades for students
Harvard University faculty have decided to limit the number of 'A' grades awarded to undergraduate students to combat grade inflation. This policy, which will take effect in the fall of 2027, allows faculty to award A's to no more than one-fifth of students in a course, plus up to four additional students. The move aims to enhance academic integrity and better recognize genuine academic achievement among students.
- ▪Harvard faculty voted to cap 'A' grades to address grade inflation.
- ▪The new policy will be implemented in the fall of 2027.
- ▪More than two-thirds of the faculty supported the measure.
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Straits Times — World files mainly under world. We currently carry 1,485 of its stories.
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| Original publisher | Straits Times — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/harvard-faculty-take-aim-at-grade-inflation-by-capping-a-grades-for-students |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 06:25:00 +0800 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T22:30:03.233Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T22:30:03.233Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 2M8-0_vO8AAU · 4 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Harvard faculty take aim at grade inflation by capping ‘A’ grades for studentsSign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inboxThe change, which will go into effect in the fall of 2027, is one of the first efforts by a prestigious US university to tackle the widespread problem of grade inflation.PHOTO: LUCY LU/NYTIMESPublished May 21, 2026, 06:25 AMUpdated May 21, 2026, 06:25 AMMASSACHUSETTS - Harvard University faculty have imposed a limit on the number of “A” grades that can be given to undergraduate students in an effort to end a growing trend of grade inflation at the elite US university.In hundreds of votes cast over the past week, more than two-thirds of the voting faculty supported a measure allowing them to award A’s to no more than one-fifth of the students enrolled in a…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Straits Times — World.