"Harvard's faculty of arts and sciences (FAS) is committed to providing the best possible educational experience for its undergraduates," the statement said. "The EPC began to re-examine grading practices in the College, to ensure grading standards that both usefully distinguish between work of differing quality and motivate students to work to their fullest potential."
The Boston Globe described the effort as the "broadest and most explicit attempt in years" to combat grade inflation, and reported that the investigation came in response to a series of articles published in early October, which revealed that 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with honors last year.
The Globe article suggested that "decades of grade inflation" had made it far easier to graduate with honors from Harvard than from any of the country's other leading universities.
However, Andrea Shen of the office of communications at the University said that the move far predates The Globe articles, which were published only a few weeks ago.
"I think the 91 percent [statistic] is ludicrous," said Dean of Students Ben Lieber. "There's nothing distinct about being part of 91 percent."
According to the article, Yale had the second highest number of students graduating with honors with 51 percent, followed by Princeton with 44 percent and Brown with 42 percent. Only eight percent of Cornell seniors graduated with honors last year.
This comes at a time when many top universities have reported problems with grade inflation and are looking into methods of dealing with the problem without unfairly punishing their students. One of the complications is that if a school were to completely eliminate grade inflation, students might face unfair competition from students who received grades from schools that still gave inflated grades, according to The Globe article.
While some schools limit the number of students receiving honors to a top percentage, Amherst currently has no such policy. Yale, along with many other leading universities, caps the number of graduating students receiving university-wide honors to 30 percent.
Lieber said that he thought there was real distinction in a system that restricted the number of students receiving honors to 30 percent or less. "You certainly need to restrict it considerably more than Harvard does," Lieber said.
He added that he also felt that at Amherst there should be a considerably smaller percentage of students receiving honors. "If the majority are graduating with honors, by definition, its not a distinction that's terribly meaningful," Lieber said.
According to a Harvard Gazette article, in 1997 the University capped the number of students receiving the highest honors, summa cum laude, to five percent of the graduating class. However, the other honors are still based on grade point average alone, requiring students to have a B-plus average to graduate magna cum laude and a B average to receive cum laude honors.
According to the office of the registrar, Amherst students must have an B-plus grade point average to graduate cum laude, a B-plus/A-minus grade point average to graduate magna cum laude and an A-minus grade point average to be a candidate to graduate summa cum laude. Students wishing to graduate summa cum laude must also receive high distinction on their thesis, while thesis work is not required to receive other honors.
Additionally, students may receive departmental distinction based on a senior honors thesis.
Currently, the College does not have a cap on the number of students graduating with honors. Last June, 73.6 percent of seniors graduated with honors, 8.4 percent summa cum laude, 48.4 magna cum laude and 16.9 cum laude.
"I think there is a hesitancy to attach quotas to grades or honors," President Tom Gerety said.
The faculty recently voted on a ballot with five different alternatives for modifying the honors system.
Lieber said that while the committee is currently focusing on a mechanism for how the honors system will be reformed, the committee eventually plans to focus on more specific issues, such as what percentage of seniors should graduate with honors in the future.