SOME STUDENTS make the grade. Some professors make grades up. In Harvey C. Mansfield's political-philosophy course at Harvard University, there's now going to be a little of both.

The longtime government professor (right), who has come to be known as "C-minus Mansfield," says he's so tired of waging a oneman campaign against grade inflation at Harvard that he's decided if he can't beat 'em, he'll join 'em. But he's playing by his own set of rules.

This semester, Mr. Mansfield will be giving students two grades: an unofficial one to signify how he thinks they are really doing in class and an official one, for their transcripts, that reflects how he thinks most Harvard professors evaluate students, namely, too generously.

Mr. Mansfield chalks up the surge in good grades at Harvard to, among other things, an influx of black students on the campus in the early 1970's. "White professors didn't want to give black students C's," asserts Mr. Mansfield, "so they stopped giving C's to white students to be fair."

He no longer thinks black students are graded differently, but insists the grading system itself is flawed. Until now, the average grade for Mr. Mansfield's students has been in the B range. Yet nearly 51 percent of Harvard's undergraduates earn A's and A-minuses, he notes. That, he says, is "scandalous."

Some on the campus think the scandal is of Mr. Mansfield's own making. The parallels he's drawn between the start of grade inflation and the increase in black enrollments is "outrageous and completely groundless," says Susan Pedersen, dean of undergraduate education.

Yes, she says, grades at Harvard are better than they were 30 years ago. But so are the students. "If a B-plus is more an average grade than it used to be and people understand that, I don't see that as a problem."

Mr. Mansfield begs to differ. "A C is an average grade, so why don't we give it?" For this semester, at least, Mr. Mansfield won't be awarding any official C's, but he holds out hope of doing so again. "I'm trying to undermine the Harvard system of grade inflation by exposing it as the laughable mistake it is."

-ALISON SCHNEIDER