News broke last week that Harvard University — that ancient temple of American prestige and intersectional pride — may finally attempt to curb its notorious grade inflation. For decades, Harvard has handed out A’s like party favors at a preschool graduation. But now, administrators seem to fear the public has noticed that every graduate’s transcript reads: Congratulations! You’re brilliant.
Naturally, the students have responded with calm reflection and humility.
The American university had one job — to cultivate wisdom and virtue. If Harvard students now treat studying as oppression, maybe it’s time to grade the universities themselves.
Just kidding. They’re in full moral meltdown — which is remarkable, since most of them deny morality exists unless it’s part of an identity rubric. Touch their grades, though, and suddenly they rediscover absolute truth, glowing with divine fire.
What provoked this crisis of the soul? The rumor — merely the rumor — that they might have to study.
One distraught undergraduate complained that stricter grading would force students to spend time on academics instead of extracurriculars. And as every Harvard student knows, college is all about extracurriculars. Academics are a high-school hazing ritual — a price of entry to the elite club where you never have to study again.
Other students reportedly spent the day crying. It’s a hard life.
When they lamented losing time for extracurriculars, some surely meant yachting. Others meant activism. Who will dismantle “colonizing heteronormativity” if the revolution has to pause for midterms? Who will liberate the oppressed from the tyranny of citations?
Their outrage, ridiculous as it sounds, reveals at least three uncomfortable truths about the American university system — and the students it produces.
Some students said they nearly killed themselves to get into Harvard. Not to study there — don’t be ridiculous! — but to ensure that they’d never need to study again.
If you’re an employer expecting a Harvard graduate to be a disciplined thinker, brace yourself. You may be hiring someone who hasn’t cracked a book in years. Many of them majored in activism and minored in demanding that you pay them to keep doing it.
These students treat the workplace as an extension of campus — a new platform for “advocacy,” complete with your office space, Slack channels, and HR department. You wanted an employee. You may get an organizer.
Harvard attracts a particular type: students convinced that excellence is their birthright and that hard work is a microaggression.
Some even claim that “work ethic” must be decolonized as a relic of whiteness — a fragile idea until you remember they say it while demanding an A for not working. One almost admires the nerve.
We should stop treating “Harvard graduate” as a compliment. It’s becoming a warning label. These students expect to skip effort, skip merit, skip discipline — and demand that you “check your privilege” if you object.
Why wouldn’t they? Harvard built an entire institutional culture around their sensitivities. The modern university no longer shapes students; it rearranges itself around their demands.
The Harvard meltdown exposes a national rot. For decades, Americans have been told that college is essential for success. Universities responded by expanding enrollment, inventing dozens of useless “studies” degrees, building administrative empires, and raising tuition to swallow every loan dollar available.
The result?
Now we’re mass-producing indebted graduates with inflated expectations of high-paying careers and no knowledge or skills to justify either. Education has become a luxury accessory — a handbag whose value lies in the logo.
To test the system’s bankruptcy, try asking a recent Ivy League graduate:
You’ll likely get a breathless word salad about “advocating for marginalized identities and dismantling structures of oppression.” Ask how that helps anyone achieve the good, and you’ll get a vacant stare fit for a zoning map.
Of course, technical fields like engineering still demand real work. But those are small islands in a vast sea of bureaucratic waste. Most universities now operate as billion-dollar community centers with a few classes on the side — entertainment disguised as education.
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Maybe, but don’t bet on it.
You can’t “hire your way out” of a faculty that’s 97% left or far left. That’s not an imbalance; it’s a monoculture. And monocultures don’t reform themselves.
But the reckoning is coming. Enrollment is falling, budgets are exploding, and public trust is collapsing. The only thing keeping many universities alive is their ability to convince students that identity activism and LGBTQ+ advocacy are transcendent educational callings.
The solution is simple: Stop paying for the nonsense. No one is obliged to spend $80,000 a year to hear a gender-theory lecturer attack the biblical definition of marriage. No law, moral or otherwise, requires funding your own indoctrination.
Let them lecture to empty rooms.
The American university had one job — to cultivate wisdom and virtue. If Harvard students now treat studying as oppression, maybe it’s time to grade the universities themselves.
And the report card is long overdue.
Harvard University's Office of Undergraduate Education released a 25-page report on Monday revealing that roughly 60% of the grades dished out in undergraduate classes are As. This is apparently not a signal that the students are necessarily better or smarter than past cohorts but rather that Harvard As are now easier to come by.
According to the report, authored by the school's dean of undergraduate education Amanda Claybaugh and reviewed by the Harvard Crimson, the proportion of students receiving A grades since 2015 has risen by 20 percentage points.
'If that standard is raised even more, it's unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes.'
Whereas at the time of graduation, the median grade point average for the class of 2015 was 3.64, it was 3.83 for the class of 2025 — and the Harvard GPA has been an A since the 2016-2017 academic year.
"Nearly all faculty expressed serious concern," wrote Claybaugh. "They perceive there to be a misalignment between the grades awarded and the quality of student work."
Citing responses from faculty and students, the report revealed that the specific functions of grading — motivating students, indicating mastery of subject matter, and separating the wheat from the chaff — are not being fulfilled.
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"In the view of faculty, grades currently distinguish between work that meets expectations or fails to meet expectations, but beyond that grades don't distinguish much at all," said the report. "'Students know that an 'A' can be awarded,' one faculty member observed, 'for anything from outstanding work to reasonably satisfactory work. It's a farce.'"
Claybaugh acknowledged that grades can serve as a useful and transparent way to "distinguish the strongest student work for the purposes of honors, prizes, and applications to professional and graduate schools." However, since As are now handed out like candy and many students have identical GPAs, prizes and other benefits must now be dispensed on the basis of less objective factors, which "risks introducing bias and inconsistency into the process," suggested the dean.
The report noted further that Harvard University's current grading practices "are not only undermining the functions of grading; they are also damaging the academic culture of the College more generally" by constraining student choice, exacerbating stress, and "hollowing out academics."
Steven McGuire, a fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, highlighted the admission in the report that Harvard owes much of its current crisis to its coddling of unprepared students.
"For the past decade or so, the College has been exhorting faculty to remember that some students arrive less prepared for college than others, that some are struggling with difficult family situations or other challenges, that many are struggling with imposter syndrome — and nearly all are suffering from stress," said the report.
"Unsure how best to support their students, many have simply become more lenient. Requirements were relaxed, and grades were raised, particularly in the year of remote instruction," continued the report. "This leniency, while well-intentioned, has had pernicious effects."
The new report is hardly the first time the school has suggested that Harvard undergraduate students tend to be coddled, intellectually fragile, ideologically rigid, and slothful.
Citing faculty feedback, Harvard's Classroom Social Compact Committee indicated in a January report that undergraduate students "have rising expectations for high grades, but falling expectations for effort"; often don't attend class; frequently don't do many of the assigned readings; seek out easy courses; and in some cases are "uncomfortable with curricular content that is not aligned with the student's moral framework."
The January report noted further that "some teaching fellows grade too easily because they fear negative student feedback."
Claybaugh's grade inflation report has reportedly prompted complaints and whining this week from students.
Among the dozens of students who objected to the report and its findings was Sophie Chumburidze, who told the Harvard Crimson, "The whole entire day, I was crying."
"I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best," said Chumburidze. "It just felt soul-crushing."
Kayta Aronson told the Crimson that higher standards could adversely impact students' health.
"It makes me rethink my decision to come to the school," said Aronson. "I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school. I was looking forward to being fulfilled by my studies now, rather than being killed by them."
Zahra Rohaninejad suggested that raising standards might sap the enjoyment out of the Harvard experience.
"I can't reach my maximum level of enjoyment just learning the material because I'm so anxious about the midterm, so anxious about the papers, and because I know it's so harshly graded," said Rohaninejad. "If that standard is raised even more, it's unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes."
The student paper indicated the university did not respond to its request for comment.
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Law enforcement is investigating an explosion at Harvard University medical school building that appeared to be "intentional," according to multiple reports.
A police officer responded at 2:48 a.m. on Saturday after a fire alarm was activated in the Goldenson building.
The officer reported seeing two people fleeing the scene before locating a fire on the building's fourth floor where there appeared to be an "intentional" explosion. The officer tried to approach and the pair before entering the building.
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No injuries were reported and the Boston police swept the building for "any additional devices" but found none.
The FBI also confirmed that they are assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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Individuals can most excel when asked to do so, and Harvard should embody that call to greatness.
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