Grade Caps Fail the Game Theory Exam
18 hours ago
- #Grade Inflation
- #Harvard
- #Academic Policy
- Proposal to cap A grades at Harvard aims to address grade inflation but may create competitive distortions.
- Capping grades would transform grading into a relative competition among students, like the bear-and-hiker analogy.
- Fixed grade caps penalize high-performing students in advanced courses, potentially reducing enrollment in challenging classes.
- System may bias against non-native speakers in language courses and disadvantage ambitious students.
- Proposed use of percentile rankings for honors could amplify small performance differences unfairly.
- Optional satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading could exclude advanced courses from GPA, harming students’ evaluations.
- Grade caps compress ability and difficulty into one signal, lacking nuance for course rigor.
- Better alternatives include reporting course difficulty on transcripts, finer grading scales, or statistical methods like Elo rankings.
- Solution requires scientific rigor in incentive design to avoid rules that promote competition over achievement.