Harvard’s GPA Bubble Is About to Burst—Faculty Need to Let Out the Hot Air

Harvard College has a grade inflation problem. But beneath it lies a deeper scandal: the faculty who have allowed, and even encouraged, the decay.

The Atlantic recently reported that the average GPA at Harvard now hovers around 3.8—a number so inflated it renders distinctions meaningless. Students today can largely count on being graded as excellent, regardless of whether they show up, engage with big ideas, or do more than the bare minimum. Many are not showing up. The classroom, once the heart of collegiate life, has become an afterthought.

Instead of engaging with books, students compete for consulting and finance clubs that mimic the recruiting process of Wall Street firms complete with résumés, interviews, and case studies. By sophomore year, many undergraduates treat coursework as background noise while they devote their energy to preparing for internships and elite club acceptances. Others coast through easy classes, rarely doing the reading. A Harvard junior anonymously admitted in the Atlantic that she could not recall peers who read texts closely enough even to form opinions about them. This is not education. It is credential-chasing.

The culture is corrosive. Yes, many of today’s students are often entitled and fragile. They arrive from high schools that fed them perfect grades and ceaseless praise. They are pragmatic and chase prestige wherever they can find it. But students are students: they are supposed to be shaped, challenged, and formed. The deeper scandal is that many of Harvard’s professors have not only failed to redirect them but have actively enabled this drift. Many have betrayed their vocation by refusing to lead.

Consider the candor of Melani Cammett, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs and director of the Weatherhead Center. “I feel like college has become almost anti-intellectual,” she admitted in the Atlantic. “This is the place where we’re supposed to deal with big ideas, and yet students are not really engaging with them.” That admission matters. Cammett sits in one of Harvard’s most prominent academic chairs. Her voice carries weight. But the question practically asks itself: why now? Harvard did not become “anti-intellectual” overnight. The decline has been visible for years. Professors whispered about it privately and complained in lounges. But when it came to acting collectively or speaking publicly, too many looked away.

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At least some administrators, unlike much of the faculty, have begun to admit the stakes. Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, has described the current system as not only unsustainable but immoral. “If we have the world’s biggest university library, then our students should be reading these books,” she said. “And if the students we’re admitting don’t want to read those books, or if we have set up an incentive structure that dissuades them from reading these books, then that is immoral, and we need to reincentivize them to do so.” She is right. Administrators are groping toward solutions, pressing for stricter grading policies and attendance rules. Yet, while deans discuss fairness and morality, many professors cling to their comfort and prioritize their course evaluations. They know what is wrong. They simply will not act.

This is not new. Two decades ago, government professor Harvey Mansfield saw where Harvard was heading. He protested grade inflation by giving his students two marks: the “official” inflated Harvard grade and a separate “true grade” he believed they had actually earned. Mansfield warned that grade inflation would hollow out academic rigor and incentivize mediocrity. He was right. His colleagues largely dismissed him. Mansfield was painted as eccentric, even cruel. His protest went nowhere, and the culture of inflation became entrenched. Harvard is now living with the consequences he predicted.

Faculty passivity extends beyond grading. When anti-Semitism spiked on campus after October 7, many faculty were nowhere to be found. Instead of naming the hostility Jewish students faced, professors too often downplayed it or denied it. The record shows a disturbing unwillingness to see what was in front of them: classrooms where Jewish students were ostracized, campus quads where hostility went unchecked, and faculty meetings where silence passed for neutrality. This was not neutrality — it was complicity.

Harvard’s professors enjoy extraordinary autonomy and privilege. Yet when clarity was required, too many retreated into silence. Even in Widener Library, the symbolic center of Harvard’s intellectual life, faculty behavior during episodes of hostility revealed a deeper rot. Those entrusted to guard the university’s moral and intellectual seriousness chose instead to guard their reputations and comfort.

The pattern is unmistakable. When students demand comfort, faculty often provide it. When a moral stand is required, many look away. When hard truths must be told, too many retreat into jargon, research, or self-protection. Professors have become more concerned with their own careers, reputations, and grants than with their students. They guard their privileges rather than fulfill their responsibilities. In doing so, many have acted cowardly and self-interested when they should have been courageous and sacrificial.

This is the bitter irony. Harvard professors are not just researchers. They are teachers. Their first responsibility is not to themselves or their CVs but to their students. Teaching is a sacred duty. Professors hold in their hands the formation of the next generation of leaders—leaders who will sit in boardrooms, courtrooms, government offices, and classrooms themselves. To inflate grades, to look away from hostility, to avoid demanding engagement, is not neutrality. It is betrayal.

And betrayal has consequences. Students, seeing that effort and excellence are optional, do what is easiest. They learn that coasting will be rewarded, that seriousness is unnecessary, that prestige can substitute for purpose. They internalize the idea that Harvard is a brand, not a challenge. And they are not wrong—because that is the message too many of their professors are sending. Students are a problem—but they are students. The faculty know better. And by enabling this drift, many have betrayed their calling as educators.

What would authentic leadership look like? It would mean grading honestly, telling students the truth about their performance, even when unpopular. It would mean rewarding intellectual risk and ambition, not mediocrity. It would mean professors showing up prepared, pushing students into uncomfortable debates, and modeling what a serious life of the mind looks like. It would mean speaking early, not waiting until the world sees the rot before acknowledging it. In other words, it would mean acting like teachers again.

Harvard’s administration is now scrambling to debate reforms, including stricter grading, clearer attendance requirements, and tougher standards. Those are good steps. But reforms from above will fail if faculty remain passive. Administrators cannot save the classroom if professors have abandoned it. Harvard’s intellectual culture will only be renewed if professors rediscover their fundamental trust as educators.

The students are indeed deeply problematic. They are too often entitled, disengaged, and fragile. But they are also young, and their direction depends on the adults in the room. Faculty cannot wash their hands and say, “Students these days.” The crisis is not just the students’ behavior; it is the professors’ cowardice in enabling it.

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And the stakes go beyond Cambridge. Across American higher education, too many faculty have grown careerist and self-protective. They chase grants, guard their time, and prefer quiet to risk. They retreat into research while the classroom becomes a secondary obligation. The pandemic accelerated the decline, but the habit was a long-standing one. The result is an elite class educated in name only—leaders untested by the discipline of study and insulated from the habits of intellectual honesty. At a moment when most Americans say they’ve lost confidence in higher education, Harvard’s failure delivers a devastating message: even the nation’s most prestigious university no longer believes in its own academic mission.

There are exceptions. At some liberal arts colleges, in honors programs, and in seminar traditions, professors still demand seriousness, and students still rise to it. These prove that decline is not inevitable. But when Harvard signals to the country that prestige does not require excellence, that comfort is preferable to courage, the ripple effects degrade the entire academy—and with it, the nation’s civic health.

Harvard now faces a choice. Professors can continue to lament from the sidelines, offering belated observations about an “anti-intellectual” culture they themselves enabled. Or they can reclaim their vocation. They can remember that they are teachers first, entrusted with forming minds, cultivating excellence, and telling the truth even when it stings.

The world has noticed. The rot of Harvard’s faculty culture is no longer an inside conversation. The cowardice, careerism, and comfort-first mentality of too many professors are now visible to the country. The students are a problem, but they are students. The faculty know better. And by enabling this drift, many have betrayed their duty to truth.

Harvard can remain a brand while losing its soul. Or its professors can finally choose courage over cowardice, duty over self-interest, and the depth and discipline that a true university education demands. The survival of Harvard’s credibility and the trust Americans place in higher education itself depends on it.

Image by Jared Gould using ChatGPT Text-to-Image