HBS Rethinks Grade Policy

Harvard Business School (HBS) may amend its current policy of prohibiting students from disclosing their grades to potential employers, MBA Program Chair Richard S. Ruback announced in a letter to the student body last week.

The school is considering a return to optional disclosure, under which students would have the choice of letting recruiters see their grades from HBS. The present non-disclosure practice has been in place since 1998.

Any changes that HBS decides to implement would not affect students currently enrolled at the school, but would only apply to future classes, Ruback wrote.

Ruback and HBS student leaders both said that such a change would be intended primarily to reinvigorate the school’s academic focus, as well as to improve the recruiting process.

“In many ways, non-disclosure is inconsistent with our mission of developing outstanding business leaders,” Ruback wrote. “Much of what business leaders do is define, measure, and seek ways to enhance performance.”

Akram Zaman, who is co-president of the HBS Student Association’s Executive Committee, said that the organization had not yet taken a stance on the issue, but noted that there is a perception that “general academic motivation and rigor has gone down” among HBS students.

“The consensus is that people are valuing social, networking, and extracurricular activities, rather than gaining general management skills,” he added.

HBS is not the only top business school reexamining its grade disclosure policy. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School—the three other peer schools that have a non-disclosure policy—are also reviewing to what extent students should be allowed to show potential employers their grades.

Ruback, who is also a senior associate dean at HBS and Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, said in an interview yesterday that the review of HBS’s grade disclosure policy was part of a wider effort to improve the classroom environment and was not prompted by any specific event.

“There’s nothing special on the timing,” he said. “It’s what came on the agenda.”

Under the school’s current grading system, the top 15 to 25 percent of students in a class receive a Category I grade, and the bottom 10 percent are usually given a Category III grade. The remaining middle 65 to 75 percent are assigned a Category II grade.

Zaman and Ruback both said that grading system does not seem to provide the right incentives to make students focus on their academic work.

“People think that they won’t be in the top fraction of the class and that they won’t fail out,” Zaman said, “so many of them take on the attitude that they don’t need to work as hard.”

Ruback wrote in his letter that optional disclosure might help resolve that issue.

“We want to be sure we provide positive incentives for students in a way that helps them make the most of their time at HBS,” he wrote. “We also believe students earn their grades, and thus it is fair they be able to use them to highlight their capabilities in a career search, should they so choose.”

When asked whether an optional-disclosure policy would pressure students to reveal their grades, Ruback responded that he thought that HBS graduates’ employment opportunities would not be significantly affected.

“We had on the magnitude of three job offers per student last year. It’s very much the students’ market,” he said.

According to Zaman, most HBS students with whom he had discussed the issue opposed the change, although he noted that many students did not know that grade disclosure would be optional, not required, under the proposed change.

Ruback said that the administration intends to reach a decision in time to inform the first prospective students accepted into the MBA Class of 2008, who are set to be notified on Jan. 18.

“We believe that we have to let students know what we’re going to do before they decide to come here,” he said.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.