Majority of Yale students got A's last year, frustrating some professors: 'Dishonest to our students'

A new report reveals 78.97 percent of grades given to Yale undergraduate students last year were in the A-range.

The surprising statistics left some professors and students at the elite university frustrated that high grades had lost their meaning, according to the New York Times.

"When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students," philosophy professor Shelly Kagan told the Times.

Yale student Gustavo Toledo, who is studying political science and plans to pursue law school, worried that grade inflation would hurt students who worked to earn high grades.

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"If Yale and other Ivy League institutions start getting these reputations for grade inflation, students who were already feeling pressured to get these high G.P.A.s will then feel that their work is sort of devalued," the student said. "This obviously doesn’t help."

The grade report, authored by economics professor Ray Fair, was first reported in Yale's student newspaper, the Yale Daily News, last week. Fair told the Daily News that grades started rising during the COVID pandemic in 2020-2021, but has continued. The mean GPA also rose to 3.70 for the 2022-2023 school year, up from 3.60 in 2013-2014.

"Some thought [the COVID effect] would be temporary, but it has more or less persisted. [It’s] probably the faculty going easier on students because COVID was a pain," Fair told the Daily News. "The report simply documents the history of grading at Yale … It gives the ‘current state of grading’ and I think the numbers are straightforward to interpret."

The report also showed "large differences" in grades given across large-enrollment subjects. While grades in the A-range were given to 52.39 percent of students in economic courses, A-range grades were given in 92.37 percent of History of Science, Medicine and Public Health courses. In lower enrollment courses, that difference was stark between subjects as well: 57.36 percent of students in Engineering & Applied Science courses earned A's, while 92.06 percent of Women's Gender & Sexuality Studies students earned A-range grades.

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Yale isn't the only Ivy League school liberally handing out As. An October report from Harvard University's Undergraduate Office revealed nearly identical findings; 79 percent of grades given during the 2020-2021 school year were in the A-range. 

Like Yale, there were significant differences between the grades given in humanities courses versus engineering and science courses.

"The proportion of A-range grades given in the 2020-21 academic year varied significantly by division: 73 percent in the Arts and Humanities, 65 percent in both the Sciences and Social Sciences, and 60 percent in courses at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences," the student newspaper the Harvard Crimson reported.

Economics professor Ray Fair declined to comment for this story. Dean of College Pericles Lewis told Fox News Digital that Yale shared this faculty report in order to "provide transparency to the university's community."

"Yale students are admitted through a highly competitive process. It is not surprising that they are smart and well-prepared and therefore tend to earn high grades. In general, instructors determine the grading policies for their own classes, individually. And because classes vary so widely by type, size, and subject, guidelines vary within departments and among instructors," he said in a statement.

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