Anything Harvard College does draws attention. So it was no surprise that a recent report arguing that undergraduate grading practices are “out of whack,” as one professor put it, got a lot of buzz. Some of the public responses were unsympathetic, painting Harvard as a college full of easy graders and entitled students.
Yet many of the challenges Harvard outlined are commonplace in higher education. Professors fear tougher grading will lead to negative course evaluations. Instructors sometimes find modern teaching practices are difficult to align with grades. Students are putting more pressure on professors to raise grades they don’t like.
One of the report’s most compelling findings is that Harvard students almost universally speak about grades in terms of how much effort they put in. If they spend a lot of time studying and do all of the work asked of them, they believe, they should get an A. That misunderstanding is not unique to Harvard, say professors elsewhere.