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| Yes | 19% | 148 votes | Total: 784 votes | |
| No | 81% | 636 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesAs a recent college graduate, I just commenced almost 20 years in our education system. Reflecting upon my personal experience, I believe that if students were not so concerned about receiving the best letter grade possible, they could focus on the true purpose of institutions of higher-education; learning.
The courses in which professors encourage learning and pay less attention to letter grades are usually the ones that students thrive in and retain the most experiences and information from. Looking back on stacks of tests and essays, the most useful feedback I received were written comments from professors, not the scores written on top.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, courses that are centered around percentages and grades generally fail to actually teach students, who lose sight of the actual lessons somewhere along the Scantrons, Bluebooks, and rote-memorization.
Teachers often fall prey to grading system as well. Websites such as ratemyprofessor.com report statistics on how many students' receive which letter grades every semester, mistakenly sending the message that professors who give the most "A"s are the "best" professors to take courses from. Sadly, this warped idea encourages some professors to hand out good grades instead of what students actually need, which is constructive criticism if they are below par. This, in turn, teaches the student nothing.
Unfortunatel y, not all students enrolled in community colleges or universities are serious about their education and banning all types of grading scales might let some fall through the cracks. While some might argue that this is not the problem of teachers, there still has to be some marker to show that a student completed the required coursework and is a candidate to move on to upper division courses. Also, there is still a need to place some students on academic probation and determine eligibility for sports, Greek organizations, and other activities.
However, instead of a "A" through "F" grading system, a pass or fail might be more effective. This would encourage students to look past the insignificant letter grades but still reward those who put in the required effort. For those that go above and beyond their semester coursework, they won't take home an "A+" but instead what they have learned. Instead of listing a high GPA on their resume, students could point out educational accomplishments.
Most importantly, if the grading system is done away with, students who are serious about their educational careers will take what is really important from their courses: the lessons taught in them.
Learn more about this author, Casey Kirk.
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No
Grading is a vital part of student evaluation and should not be abolished in college and university courses. There are two main arguments commonly presented in opposition to standard grading: that grading is so arbitrary and biased as to be meaningless and that anxiety over grades forces students into a form of tunnel vision and actually inhibits their ability to develop as intellectuals. I will address each of these arguments in turn.
First, it is certainly true that biased or otherwise unfair grading exists in academia and that students are harmed by this kind of behavior. Every university should have an equitable system in place to identify and rectify unfair grading practices, and, whenever possible, course evaluation procedures should be established across sections of a particular class so that all students are graded based on the same criteria. Grading procedures should also be made as transparent as possible, so that a student can see how a particular score was arrived at. That said, throwing out the baby with the bathwater and abolishing grades is a simplistic and ineffective solution to a complex problem.
Consider, for example, two students in a course. One student is highly intelligent, studies the course material diligently, and submits exemplary assignments that show an unusually astute grasp of the subject matter. The second student is of standard intelligence, and his/her assignments demonstrate only a cursory understanding of the general principles of the course. S/He is doing passable, but not superior, work. Flash forward several years when both students are applying for spots in the same graduate program. Based on their transcripts for the course, both students passed; beyond that, they are indistinguishable on paper. Certainly the superior student could submit a letter of recommendation in support of his/her work, but, after four years of ungraded work, which professor's letter should s/he choose?
Grading, if implemented well, provides a system for objectively evaluating a student's performance and capabilities in relation to his/her peers, and offers a means for determining the most suitable candidates for advanced degrees and certain kinds of employment. Without grades, schools and employers would be left with the unmanageable task of contacting an unruly number of professors in order to gage their personal opinions of the students in their courses. Alternatively, students might be left with the need to preserve all of their university work indefinitely, so that they would be able to provide, perhaps a decade later, evidence of their academic achievement when applying to master and doctoral programs. It's an unworkable system.
Next, opponents argue that performance anxiety over fixed tests and graded assignments inhibits high level thinking. There are two flaws in this line of thinking. First, the argument supposes that an ability to meet established standards at regular intervals is not an important aspect of intellectual development. How valuable, for example, might a scientist be if s/he is too fragile to face criticism or work within fixed deadlines? Regular deliverables and established grading systems help students develop certain real world skills beyond the subject matter at hand, including the ability to respond effectively to external evaluation and to work within a deadline.
The second flaw in this argument is the supposition that students emerge from high school with the maturity, discipline and self awareness needed to perform optimally in an atmosphere devoid of external watermarks for success. As a Ph.D. student at a university in the United Kingdom, I am currently living the "grade free" dream. I have few required courses, and the ones I do take are pass/fail. In lieu of graded assignments and tests, I meet regularly with an adviser to discuss my progress and once a year with an external evaluator. The only fixed "test" I will face comes at the end of three years when I'll submit my thesis (dissertation) and defend it before a panel of professors. Far from being freeing, this process is incredibly demanding, and it's not something I wouldn't have been capable of as an 18-year-old college freshman.
Students who progress through academia will find themselves eased into a process of freer thinking and increasingly personal evaluation of their work. Master's programs generally incorporate fewer tests and more written projects than undergraduate courses, and doctoral program enhance opportunities for personalized study and evaluation even further. At each step in the process, students use skills they developed in their previous studies to advance their thinking. The desire by students (and some academics) to make an end run around this process by incorporating the academic environment experienced by Ph.D. candidates and post-doc researchers into undergraduate studies is misguided. Far from encouraging creative thought, it is likely to paralyze otherwise promising students by forcing them into an environment they are not prepared for.
Learn more about this author, Jayden Harlow.
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