This college grading policy deserves an F (or an inflated D)

photo illustration created with chatgpt The student who stayed after class was in tears. Because of a test grade that wasn’t an A. On a test that counted as 3% of her overall grade.Many college students feel tremendous pressure to maintain exceptional grades. And now, Harvard University and some other colleges plan to make that pressure even worse.The Ivy League school will restrict the number of A grades to 20% of a course’s enrollment, plus four more. The policy to combat grade inflation – A’s went from 24% of all grades at Harvard in 2005 to 60% in 2025 – was delayed from 2026 to 2027 but many faculty are making changes now. Other colleges are also discussing caps on A’s.Caps are a bad idea. Professors currently writing their grading policies for the academic year that begins this week for many colleges certainly should not adopt such a restriction, which would disadvantage their students compared to the students of professors with no restriction. But even if done as a collective…