I think the premise of this article is flawed — aside from the (imo very valid) “who cares!” argument with regards to grades not actually mattering for really anything anymore except when it comes to some grad programs, the implicit assumption of this analysis is that the grade system will exist in its current form in the future.
I think it’s more likely Harvard does away with the traditional letter system altogether. Aside from the fact Harvard operated just fine without it for the first 2-3 centuries it operated, let’s take a step back and try to remember what the grades were to track in the first place: students’ absorption of the material (i.e. “learning”). This type of grade system is better for measuring things that have right/wrong answers— math, memorization of dates, anything mechanical, etc. Yet with calculators and the internet making things like historical timelines and formulas etc accessible even to payment, graders’ job of even grading these “objective” becomes more subjective— if you arrive to the wrong math question, but did all the right high level steps and made a small but cascading error in the beginning, I’d posit that student likely knows the material well and would avoid that error were it pointed out. But from a grading perspective, what is that? 7/10? Same situation to a history student laying out the historical context leading up to some event and mixing up some dates. Things get even more muddled when it comes to humanities.
In fact, off the top of my head, Pomona College and Brown University, both well-regarded schools within academia (and Pomona with I believe the highest undergrad acceptance rate into Harvard grad programs), have the option for every class to be taken as Pass/Fail, except when it comes to later-stage major requirements. Graduation accolades are awarded by professor recommendation, which fosters getting to know your professors out of the classroom better than grades. Anything that needs to be GPA-gated could instead be (likely better) gated by a placement test.
Knowledge is not a 0 sum game. Maybe instead of trying to adapt our current education circumstances to to an old grading system, it’s time to think of a new system altogether.
I agree the premise of these sorts of pieces is very flawed, and I'm surprised in these discussions the assumptions are put forth so matter-of-factly.
Grades don't necessarily exist to maximize some spread and produce a nice normal distribution. They could be constructed that way, but the way they tend to be used is in communicating level of mastery with material, and if a course is well-constructed, the instructor teaches well, and the students are engaged and learning, they should generally mostly get "good grades."
The weird thing is, how do you know that Harvard students aren't basically all understanding the material in their courses well? Wouldn't you expect that?
Think about it another way. Let's say universities tried hard to improve their educational effectiveness over decades, and were successful at it. More and more students were understanding the material in courses better. Why shouldn't that be reflected in improved grades?
At some level as you point out what really matters is whether or not a student basically grasped the material well enough, and the grading system in some ways punishes risk taking by grappling with difficult material.
I was a professor for many years, and there were certain universities that were known to have extremely low GPAs (yes this still happens), so we had to factor that into graduate admissions decisions. It did nothing but hurt applicants. Those students had the benefit of coming from schools that were well-known enough to be on people's radars, and for word-of-mouth to afford admissions committees knowing about grading practices. Students from smaller schools wouldn't be so lucky.
On the other hand, GPA might be more predictive of outcomes than standardized tests (https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-...) so this discussion might be moot. It doesn't mean that something couldn't be improved about grading but it's odd to level these kinds of critiques at GPA if it's outperforming the biggest alternative available).
Oh, I completely agree that nationwide general-knowledge placement tests are likely not the best way to measure achievement -- especially the SAT/ACTs. Within US high school education, I expect the grade system to continue to exist for a while.
But when it comes to higher education, I think specialized placement tests applicable to a program are definitely useful. The LSAT and MCAT clearly have some value, at least, though they should not be considered the end-all-be-all by any means, either.
I think it’s more likely Harvard does away with the traditional letter system altogether. Aside from the fact Harvard operated just fine without it for the first 2-3 centuries it operated, let’s take a step back and try to remember what the grades were to track in the first place: students’ absorption of the material (i.e. “learning”). This type of grade system is better for measuring things that have right/wrong answers— math, memorization of dates, anything mechanical, etc. Yet with calculators and the internet making things like historical timelines and formulas etc accessible even to payment, graders’ job of even grading these “objective” becomes more subjective— if you arrive to the wrong math question, but did all the right high level steps and made a small but cascading error in the beginning, I’d posit that student likely knows the material well and would avoid that error were it pointed out. But from a grading perspective, what is that? 7/10? Same situation to a history student laying out the historical context leading up to some event and mixing up some dates. Things get even more muddled when it comes to humanities.
In fact, off the top of my head, Pomona College and Brown University, both well-regarded schools within academia (and Pomona with I believe the highest undergrad acceptance rate into Harvard grad programs), have the option for every class to be taken as Pass/Fail, except when it comes to later-stage major requirements. Graduation accolades are awarded by professor recommendation, which fosters getting to know your professors out of the classroom better than grades. Anything that needs to be GPA-gated could instead be (likely better) gated by a placement test.
Knowledge is not a 0 sum game. Maybe instead of trying to adapt our current education circumstances to to an old grading system, it’s time to think of a new system altogether.