Harvard capping high marks; should we?

[poetryandwine]

Harvard University academics have voted to cap the percentage of ‘A’ grades awarded in undergraduate course modules to 20% of enrolled students, plus or minus four students. There is no cap on other grades, including the grade A- ( ‘A minus’). This will be from Autumn 2027. The change will be assessed after three years.

About 70% voted in favour of the cap.

The grade of A at Harvard is supposed to be reserved for work of exceptional merit. The last time the percentage of A grades was as low as 20% was 2005. In 2024-25, about 60% of awarded module grades were A’s.

Students are not happy. There is a fundamental difference between what students want from assessment and what academics and employers want from assessment.

UK First Class degree awards have undergone a similar but less dramatic change over the last few decades, especially since tuition fees increased. We know employers don’t find undergraduate marks and degree classifications as useful as they used to, and why they now set such high bars.

Do MumsNetters think that capping the percentage of First Class Marks in each undergraduate course module, which can easily be achieved by rescaling marks similarly to what we already do, would be a good idea, or not?

Interesting that only your most able tutees find their relative position in the cohort a useful piece of information. Maybe your students need to be feeling reasonably confident in their relative position to wish to know this information for sure? Unless they come from cultures that rank students as a matter of course and are hardened to information that UK students might find harder to process.

New UK university admissions tests (ESAT, TMUA, TARA) give relative position among test takers when communicating results so perhaps culture is evolving? GCSEs have pretty much become a ranking exercise.

@FrancisBlundy My grammar school did this in the 60s and 70s. Nothing like shaming people! You don’t work harder, you just stop looking at the “form order”. Pretty gruesome system in my view.

The idea of giving centiles might help employers distinguish between candidates better. 80% of students getting a 1st or a 2.1 is so high.

Employers can look at transcripts.

What is a centile?

Short for percentile. If your module mark is 90th centile or above then you are in top 10% of class.

@poetryandwine I've found this a fascinating thread. It seems to be perhaps more focused on STEM subjects where answers tend to be correct / incorrect compared with the humanities. In principle I am in favour of capping grades to provide a spread of grades to differentiate between students. There is a challenge that the cohorts do vary in prior academic performance between different universities... so that feeds into whether recruitment / access to post grad research be uni blind. Would for instance Imperial be allowed more 1st class degrees than Northumbria?

Incidentally I was speaking with a barrister recently and they said although they were uni blind for pupillage applications it only goes so far. An applicant only needs to say there were captain of their college boat club and it limits the number of unis the applicant were at.

I was discussing uni degree classifications with my DC recently. One graduated two years ago, the other is heading into their final year - both Oxbridge. Their perspective is in the humanities marking is more subjective - you can play the game and get a first or do something more radical and take the risk of being marked down if you fail to follow the accepted paradigm approach of key examiners. This is particularly seen in marking of undergraduate dissertations / projects.

DC1 didn't 'play the game' and while upset at the time not to get a 1st now is more settled with their degree class having read through all the comments on their diss and doesn't regret taking a more radical line. A 1st wasn't necessary for DC1's chosen profession and they are loving their job. Conversely DC2 would benefit massively from having a 1st for their future plans. They are more conformist so are more comfortable in 'playing the game' / 'following the recipe' / 'ticking the boxes'. Playing safe to get a 1st seems odd to those who were at uni in the 1980s and 90s where 1st was only given to the truly brilliant. I'm not therefore sure ranking students is necessary or desirable.

Inconsistent making isn't though new - my MSc dissertation had a 20% disparity between the two examiners marks. Fortunately they evened out to something okay. Similarly some friends from my undergraduate days were harshly marked. What is different is in the 1990s almost no one expected to get a first (in my year 6% did), now not getting one can sadly be perceived as a failure.

New UK university admissions tests (ESAT, TMUA, TARA) give relative position among test takers when communicating results so perhaps culture is evolving? GCSEs have pretty much become a ranking exercise.

TMUA has been around for over 10 years and used to provide relative position info for each paper as well as overall. Though they knew they were unlikely to be COWI standard, my DC sat the old style exam to understand where they sat in the profile; the feedback was very helpful in deciding which unis to apply to and likely ability to step up to, and enjoy, the problem solving required at uni level (the old regime had only one autumn sitting and results came out before UCAS equal consideration deadline). As you say, the other, more recently introduced tests in the same 'stable' do the same and perhaps provide similar scope to calibrate.

@Juja I do agree with what you say. Humanities is far more subjective. DD didn’t do a dissertation but found lecturers preferences rather hard to fathom. Some clicked and some didn’t. So losing a marks here and there because you haven’t picked up on their preferences makes a difference.

DD is a barrister and it’s well known some chambers ONLY pick Oxbridge grads! Many others have a strong leaning towards them too. Yes, uni blind is only a small consideration in recruitment. However non Oxbridge people know where not to apply. Working all that out is part of the pupillage game!

The name TMUA has been around for a while but the test contents and usage have changed. TARA is the new emanation of the TSA.

Our children have done both STEM and humanities degrees and my perception is that marking is perhaps a little less predictable in humanities, but not as much as all that. However, I suspect that each institution's curriculum, marking criteria and training of TAs/TFs go a long way towards ensuring reliability or not. Our humanities DC has an excellent, very recent, curriculum and explicit grading criteria; essays are marked and commented in accordance and it's been quite easy for them to pick up on consistent weaknesses and to improve them rapidly. Sure, there is the odd essay where something appears not to have pleased the marker but there is also the odd essay that gets a higher grade than expected (typically because an unusual piece of independent research is rewarded or a major theorist is challenged effectively by a real life scenario) and it all seems to even out.

Personal tutor feedback seems to focus on linear progression throughout the degree. As our DC says: some students peaked in semester 3 and you can see that they have gone as far as they ever will in this subject. So I sort of assume that transcripts are very important for Masters applications but also for a student's sense of academic and intellectual direction. A 2:1 or a First is a convention but do students (or indeed employers) pay much attention to the degree classification alone?

Surely we all agree now that we need to stay well away from shaming, @MeetMeOnTheCorner . But I wonder whether our current students may feel vulnerable if they are not amongst the very best, which is quite different, and why that might be? What’s wrong with being average in some respects?

The exams referred to by @PerpetualOptimist and @Ceramiq are taken mainly by very strong students. Hiw do they react?

@Juja raises a very good point: I agree that it is probably easier to mark consistently in STEM, although we also have occasional major disparities between the two sets of marks on UG projects and MSc dissertations. Also, even standard exam marking inevitably involves more ambiguity than one would imagine. (That’s usually a tribute to student creativity, and not a complaint) But I agree with the general statement.

I agree with everyone suggesting a more widespread use of transcripts by employers. I don’t know whether they realise the modern statistics for degree classifications. The concerns raised in the employer survey in the link shared by @PerpetualOptimist and other employer feedback do suggest that something is wrong. The link shared by @Owlbookend suggests that, at least in the fairly recent past, those with Firsts and to a lesser extent 2.1’s did/do possess traits employers value.

Yet now it seems the statistics on these degrees are almost losing meaning. Or are they?

My continued thanks.

"@poetryandwine The exams referred to by @PerpetualOptimist and @Ceramiq are taken mainly by very strong students. How do they react?"

To be honest - badly, IME. They are a shock to the self-esteem of students who have consistently been at the top of their year group at school and are not accustomed to being outside the top 5-10%. But let's hope that, as these tests, which are going mainstream for some top course choices, become embedded in the psyche of the relevant student applicant population (and the teachers and tutors and university guidance counsellors that prep them), the shock to the self-esteem is mitigated by more widespread understanding of the highly discriminatory purpose of the tests.

@poetryandwine I don't think most employers would look at transcripts. They just want to know overall where a student is placed relative to others to quickly reduce the applicant pool. Finer grading e.g. via centiles would help with that.

@Ceramiq
I agree that some students who score badly on the TMUA and TARA might find it a shock at first. I have seen some posters on Mumsnet say that their child with all A stars did surprisingly badly on one of these tests. However, I think the tests are useful for students to understand where they sit relative to others. Better for them to realise earlier rather than later and apply to the right university for them. It would be worse for a student's self-esteem to get to Imperial and not be able to keep up.

Completely agree about the purpose and utility of entrance tests - it is the moral course of action by universities to try to admit the applicants who will do best on the course of study and not to admit students likely to struggle.

@poetryandwine That’s about resilience though isn’t it? Why are they desperate to know? It feeds into huge insecurities instead of embracing the fact they may not be top but they are as good as they can be. There’s too many students who think they should be top but not everyone can be. However that’s better than being crap and knowing you are crap and being told you are crap! I know which scenario I’d take. I totally agree, average is just fine and many of these students have other attributes that employers value.

I think employers wish to trust degree classification and don’t expect far more firsts at low tariff universities. I hear the argument about market position but it’s making it very hard for employers. Employers might avoid looking at university attended but GCSEs, A levels and other attributes are all important in building a picture.

Daisy Christodolou has written about the fact that objective measures of outcomes of university learning are non-existent and that maybe something needs to be done about this. I suppose that the idea is attractive (and could perhaps do something to eliminate expensive university courses that do not create any value for students) but I am reluctant to standardize measures of educational or academic outcomes as they always seem to ultimately reduce the scope of learning and the role of creativity and trial and error which are what moves humans forward.

@Ceramiq The IFS has had a go. It’s clear from a monetary point of view that some degrees “aren’t worth it”. However the participants embark on them thinking they will buck the trend.

Sure the IFS measures outcomes but that's in monetary terms, as if the value of a degree were exclusively a product of its lifetime earnings (and tax contribution) potential. That's a different measure to academic growth.

@Ceramiq In this day and age it’s the most important one. This is why some courses are seeing dropping numbers. Students should be far more savvy about jobs and financial outcomes. Academics is for the minority who want to study further.

How did you arrange such a thing? To the best of my knowledge, 2nd year entry requires having passed the first year elsewhere. How did you come to know of the student's plight and desire to transfer out?

You are entitled to your opinion as to what is most important but measuring financial outcomes is not the subject of this thread.

@Ceramiq Oh I do beg your pardon! Thread adjudicator!

However ask yourself why students want the high grades? Why do they want to be seen to be better than their peers? In the USA it’s to get the best jobs. At least they are honest about it. Ditto here I believe but less overtly. It’s not about snugly hanging a certificate in your bedroom and being called up first on graduation day! It’s about future economic wealth. Only the very rich don’t give this a thought or the foolish . However nearly every overseas student and savvy uk ones will think about this and it adds to the pressure for universities. Especially with far fewer jobs about.

Let's keep @poetryandwine's very interesting thread on track. If you want the other discussion, perhaps start your own thread about that, different, matter.

The circumstances were rather special. The student had only just failed a much more demanding set of exams than ours in very challenging personal circumstances. Their personal tutor was close to several of my colleagues and, I suppose by extension, explained to me that the student had lost a very close vote of the Examinations Board on the question of continuation. The PT had strongly supported continuation.

The challenging situation had been resolved, the student wanted a fresh start, my colleagues who knew the PT regarded them as sound. These relationships, plus the fact that we are an obvious destination one level below Oxbridge, are possibly why the PT contacted us about the possibility of the transfer.

I seem to remember that we made sure the Central Admissions Team and Registrar were onside.