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Any changes to grading policies must ‘minimize harm to students,’ according to Faculty Senate resolution
Yale University must keep “student stress” in mind as it develops a plan to address grade inflation, a Faculty Senate resolution states.
The resolution, which passed unanimously on Thursday, calls on university leaders to “minimize harm” to students as they draft new grading policies, the Yale Daily News reports.
“Grades are a significant source of student stress with consequences for student wellbeing including increasing competition and reducing collaborative learning, diminishing student investment in exploration, and has been found to be particularly harmful for students who were racially or socioeconomically marginalized,” the resolution states.
“Any policy designed to reduce grade inflation should be implemented only alongside measures that limit its impact on student health and welfare, especially during the transition period,” it states.
Concerns about grade inflation have grown in recent years at Ivy League universities. At Yale, 81 percent of undergraduate students’ grades were A or A- in the 2024-2025 academic year, according to the resolution.
Harvard University also is addressing the issue after a 2025 report found that 60 percent of all undergraduate grades are now As, a 35 percent increase compared to 20 years ago, The Harvard Crimson reported at the time.
At Yale, the Committee on Teaching, Learning and Advising is supposed to issue policy recommendations on grade inflation in November, according to the student newspaper.
The Faculty Senate resolution, which is addressed to the committee, outlines a series of priorities for consideration including minimizing “harm to students.”
Other priorities include ensuring that professors have “autonomy” over their classrooms and encouraging students to focus on learning, not grades.
Students should be encouraged “to take challenging courses, to cultivate the more specialized skills, to take intellectual risks outside their areas of strength, [and] to develop their creative capacities to the fullest …” the resolution states.
The committee also should consult closely with faculty and students on the changes, according to the resolution.
“We need to consider carefully what a change in the grading policy will mean for the students in our classrooms,” Faculty Senate Deputy Chair David Post stated in a news release.
“They will need support, especially during the transition, and vulnerable faculty such as early tenure track and instructional faculty will also need protection from the effects of grading changes on their teaching evaluations. Those safeguards should be in place before a new policy takes effect,” Post stated.
Some students have balked at the suggestion of grading changes.
In 2024, Yale junior Brian Zhang defended grade inflation as a “good thing” to Business Insider. He said students aren’t as stressed, and colleges are taking mental health concerns seriously.
More recently, a group of students at Harvard argued in a petition that it is “racially harmful” to reform grade inflation, The College Fix reported in April.
“We center racism as a core concern, contending that although the policy is framed as neutral ‘differentiation,’ it functions as a system of ranking and sorting that mirrors and reinforces existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies,” the petition states.
MORE: Top colleges give easy grades to avoid ‘whining’ from parents: professor
