Lewis Plans To Eliminate Dean’s List

Following the cap set last spring on the number of honors awarded at graduation, the Faculty moved closer yesterday to reducing the number of other academic awards given to students.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 formally announced his intent to abolish the Dean’s List, on which 92 percent of upperclass students currently earn a place, at yesterday’s Faculty Council meeting.

“In doing so Harvard will join Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT in having no ‘Dean’s List,’” Lewis wrote in a memorandum sent to the Faculty Council earlier this month.

In addition, Lewis proposed abolishing the Rank List Groups, which divides students into six categories based on their grades, and significantly cutting the number of John Harvard Scholarships and Harvard College Scholarships awarded.

The abolition of the Dean’s List and the proposed changes to the academic awards were items “left undone” after the Faculty voted last spring to cap graduation honors and adopt a 4.0 grading scale, Lewis said in the memorandum.

The John Harvard Scholarships honor those who have in average an A-minus or better for the previous year, while the Harvard College Scholarships recognize those who have averaged at least a B-plus but lower than an A-minus.

Currently, 67 percent of students receive one or the other of the scholarships, with 19 percent receiving the John Harvard Scholarship and 48 percent the Harvard College Scholarship.

Under the new system, only the top 5 percent of each class would be designated “John Harvard Scholars,” with the next 5 percent receiving the designation of “Harvard College Scholar.” Lewis estimated the GPA cut-off for the top 10 percent to be 3.8.

Lewis indicated that by tying academic distinctions to percentages rather than set GPAs, the new system would remain selective regardless of changes in grading policy.

“That change would restore these honors to something like their original intent,” Lewis said in the memorandum.

The change in nomenclature from “scholarship” to “scholar” would emphasize the purely honorary nature of the scholarships, which come with no monetary award, he wrote in an e-mail last night.

Lewis also said the elimination of the Rank List Groups makes sense in light of last year’s changes, which changed the grading scale from a 15-point scale to a 4.0 scale starting next fall, since they have “de facto disappeared.”

Lewis’ proposal to do away with the ranking system and to scale back the awarding of the scholarships met with support from the Faculty Council, which agreed the full Faculty should vote on the suggested changes.

Council member Jay M. Harris, who is the Wolfson professor of Jewish studies, said the proposed changes in the awarding of the scholarships are not “really a momentous thing.”

“It just seems to me that it’s good to have honors and these kinds of things really mean something,” he said. “When 40, 50, 60 percent of the students are getting these awards, its not really meaningful.”

Council member Jay. H. Jasanoff ’63, who is the Diebold professor of Indo-European linguistics and philology, said eliminating the ranking system is logical.

“My personal view is that the Rank List system is obsolete. It no longer has much purpose,” Jasanoff said.

He added that he thought the proposed changes were unrelated to the ongoing debate about grade inflation.

Lewis said the full Faculty will probably vote on the proposal at its Nov. 12 meeting. If approved, which seems likely, he said he expects the changes to take effect next year.

Harris said he expects the full Faculty will react similarly to the Faculty Council.

“I’d be surprised if there’s any serious opposition unless, between now and then, the students generate some,” he said. “But in the absence of any student concern, I can’t imagine the faculty would be.”

The John Harvard Scholarship and the Harvard College Scholarship were created by the Faculty in 1896 and 1898, respectively. The Rank List Groups were created in 1877.

This is not the first time the scholarships have been reconsidered.

In the late 1890s, the Board of Overseers felt students in Group II were unworthy of honorary “Harvard College” scholarships and attempted unsuccessfully to have the name changed to “Cambridge Scholarship.”

—Kate L. Rakoczy contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Christopher M. Loomis can be reached at cloomis@fas.harvard.edu.