As the Grade Cap Looms, Arts and Performance-Based Classes Prepare to ‘Nudge’ Grading Toward Compliance

Alma T. Barak and Theresa F. Bartelme:

With Harvard’s cap on A grades approaching, the College’s performance-based classes are changing how they assess students, shifting from “vibes-based” grading to more concrete performance metrics or, in some cases, considering dropping letter grades altogether.

The new Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy will cap A grades in most undergraduate courses at 20 percent of students, plus four more, to curb the College’s grade inflation. The policy will be implemented course by course and, according to The Crimson’s analysis of grading data, is poised to hit smaller Arts and Humanities courses unevenly.

Although the policy will officially take effect in fall 2027, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh has urged faculty to follow the cap this fall as an “absolute maximum.” Several large introductory courses have already agreed to comply with the shift.

But performance-based classes have traditionally relied on “more vague and more arbitrary” grading than most Harvard courses, Theatre, Dance and Media professor David M. Levine said. TDM’s “vibes-based training” style could advantage students, he added.

Last year, 91 percent of undergraduates in Theatre, Dance, and Media courses received a flat A, the highest share of any Arts and Humanities department, and well above the College-wide rate of 63 percent. In the five years before the pandemic, the department’s average A rate ranged from 61 to 79 percent.

Music and Art, Film, and Visual Studies, the College’s other studio and performance departments, follow the same pattern. In 2024-25, 83 percent of undergraduates in music courses received an A. In AFVS, which teaches studio art and filmmaking, the A rate rose from 65 percent in 2019-20 to 78 percent last year.

Had the cap been in place in 2024-25, all but two of the three departments’ 152 courses would have exceeded it — including none of TDM’s 51 courses, 35 of Music’s 36, and 64 of AFVS’s 65.

Peter Simpson, a lecturer in physical theater, said that evaluating these “importantly subjective ideas” under an objective cap is “dilemma-fraught.”