Last month, the Faculty Council passed significant changes to the college’s graduation honors system that will go into effect at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year.
The most notable among them is the replacement of the current Latin Honors system with a percentile system. Currently, Latin Honors are awarded based on GPA thresholds: summa cum laude for graduating students with a 3.8 GPA or above, magna cum laude for those with a 3.6 and above, and cum laude for those with a 3.4 and above. Under the new structure, summa cum laude will be awarded to the top two percent of students, magna cum laude to the top 15%, and cum laude to the top 30%. This update aligns Middlebury’s system with those of peer institutions like Carleton College, Williams College and Bowdoin College.
We support the faculty’s decision to revise the honors system, and it is their prerogative to set the percentiles for summa, magna and cum laude honors each year. However, after a vigorous debate at the recent meeting where the vote took place, we can’t help but wonder if the Latin honors system is being used as a proxy for more serious issues that affect Middlebury — namely, grade inflation. It is easy to revise the standards by which we bestow honors but much more difficult to change the four years of grading that comes before Middlebury students walk across the stage.
In 2024, under the current system, a shocking 91% of graduating students received some form of Latin honors, with 56% earning summa cum laude. As the Faculty Plenary Meeting Agenda noted, “any ‘honors’ designation that nearly every student receives is not functioning as a mark of distinction.” If we are to have a Latin Honors system at all, it should achieve its mission of honoring students who work the hardest. Thankfully, the new honors system appears to be immune from grade inflation because of how it ties fixed percentiles to each honorific.
However, the Latin Honors may not hold much meaning at all in a time when hard work and high grades don’t necessarily correlate. According to the Zeitgeist 6.0, 65% of students at Middlebury have broken the Honor Code — an increase of 40 percentage points since 2019. Continuing to reward students with exceptional grades while knowing that a majority of students have cheated on assignments or exams at Middlebury is counterproductive. Faculty at the meeting also noted that Latin honors lose additional meaning when certain departments inflate grades more than others, increasing the likelihood of high GPAs for students in certain majors. And with access to platforms like MiddCourses, it is fairly simple to find out which courses are likely to give out an “easy A.” With this reality in mind, removing Latin honors entirely also deserves consideration.
Tackling grade inflation — and whether the downsides of popping our grading bubble are worth it — is worthy of serious, official debate. Let’s address the core issue head-on: Is Middlebury going to continue down the path of ever-increasing As, or will it seek to overhaul the system through grading curves, recalibrating expectations and, ultimately, grade deflation?
We sympathize with many of the reasons professors award so many A’s. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted students’ mental health struggles, and leniency during that time never fully disappeared. Additionally, professors often want students to focus more on learning than on grades. Ensuring students good grades early in the semester can help them relax and learn, but this leniency can also give them license to slack off. And once grade inflation sets in, it’s difficult to reverse; students quickly become accustomed to receiving A’s.
We know that grades matter for the many Middlebury students who pursue graduate school or the most competitive jobs where a high GPA can be a threshold for employment. But this raises another question: If nearly everyone is earning high grades, how do employers or graduate programs distinguish between students from Middlebury?
Ultimately, grade inflation fails us as students. It removes the incentive to push ourselves or be comfortable with failure. When we are practically guaranteed an A at the start of the semester, seeing it on our transcript doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. Grades should never substitute for meaningful instruction from professors, but they should be representations of this feedback — without criticism and a concrete incentive to listen to it, we miss out on the valuable opportunity to learn. Faculty, in consultation with students (perhaps through the Student Government Association), should weigh the benefits of serious deflationary measures against the possible ramifications for future careers.
What could solutions for grade inflation look like? We noted several schools such as Boston University and Princeton University that are well-known for their harsh curves, in addition to personal anecdotes from students at other schools who suggested A’s are a measure of hard work for the most dedicated, not an expectation for all. Faculty should get more comfortable acknowledging the imperfections of student exams and essays, rather than rotely bestowing 100’s to shoddy work. Students have a part to play as well: lower your expectations and consider taking difficult courses that will challenge you, even if you heard the professor is hard.
At the end of the day, the difference between a 3.94 GPA (the would-be cutoff for magna cum laude under the new system for the 2024 graduating class) and a 3.99 GPA (the would-be cutoff for summa cum laude under the new system for the 2024 graduating class) is not that meaningful, and the new system is still only a band-aid on the much larger issue of grade inflation. Students who work hard should still be recognized, but until these issues are tackled more comprehensively, the real value of a college education will continue to be compromised.
While we support the shift to a percentile-based honors system, we urge Middlebury to use this as an opportunity to take on the deeper issue at play. Honors should truly reflect excellence, not just our ability to get by.
