In Reversal, HBS To Allow Grade Disclosure

Harvard Business School (HBS) ended its seven-year-old practice of prohibiting students from disclosing their grades, Acting Dean Jay O. Light announced in a letter to the HBS student body yesterday.

The new policy, which will give students the option of showing their grades to potential employers, will apply to future classes, but will not affect MBA candidates currently enrolled at the school.

In yesterday’s letter, Light wrote that the new policy was crafted to let HBS students take personal responsibility for their academic work.

“Fundamentally, I believe it is inappropriate for HBS to dictate to students what they can and cannot say about their grades during the recruiting process,” he wrote. “I believe you and your classmates earn your grades and should be accountable for them, as you will be accountable for your performance in the organizations you will lead in the future.”

Light also invoked the administration’s desire to revitalize the educational atmosphere at HBS.

“Harvard Business School’s reputation is deeply rooted in the transformational experience we provide in our classrooms, an experience that is vitally dependent upon maintaining high academic standards. The relatively recent policy of prohibiting disclosure is inconsistent with our commitment to these standards,” wrote Light, who was not available for comment.

Light acknowledged students’ concerns that the policy change would lead to “decreased cooperation and collaboration in the classroom” and “less willingness to take risks,” but he wrote that faculty, staff, and alumni had reached a consensus that the transition could be “managed” in a way that would “minimize any such effects.” He did not provide further details in the letter.

The decision comes just over three weeks after MBA Program Chair Richard S. Ruback revealed that HBS was reviewing its grade-disclosure policy, arousing widespread student opposition.

Ruback said last night that Light had decided to move forward with the change earlier this week.

“We had gotten input from the students and had gotten input from alums and faculty,” Ruback said. “At the same time students had finished their classes and were getting ready to take their finals, so it seemed like the right time.”

The change announced yesterday will return the school to the policy that had stood until 1998, when it enacted the soon-to-be-defunct policy that forbids students from showing their grades to recruiters.

Former HBS dean Kim B. Clark ’74 issued a statement on Dec. 9 saying that, even before leaving his post last summer, he had concluded that HBS should revert to optional disclosure.

“Along with many other faculty members, I strongly believed that the time had come for us to return to a policy of grade disclosure—a policy that had, in fact, been in force for most of the School’s history—as part of our effort to make the HBS classroom experience second to none,” he wrote.

Light acknowledged the objections that students had raised to reinstating optional disclosure—ranging from decreased cooperation to an aversion to taking academic risks—but he indicated that he did not expect those potential drawbacks to be as significant.

He concluded from his discussions with HBS faculty, staff, and former students who had been at HBS before 1998 that “most believe the transition back to our original policy can be managed—with careful consideration of the implementation issues many of you have raised—to minimize any such effects.”

The first group of prospective students admitted to the Class of 2008 will be notified of their admissions status on Jan. 18.

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