4 ms·

What's with the obsession with student assessment over student learning? At the end of the day the student has to perform, and there are plenty of opportunities

What's with the obsession with student assessment over student learning? At the end of the day the student has to perform, and there are plenty of opportunities to build up a network of people that will assert you know your stuff. Why is it that grades are still a thing at this level?

johnfn 9y ago
Saves time. It's a lot easier to determine if you are capable from "my GPA is x" rather than having someone sit down and write code for a few hours and doing a code review.
- taurath 9y ago
  Everyone does code review or whiteboards now in industry at least - it's not as if you're offered a residency or job after you get a degree unless it's a pretty good degree with some actual interviewing.
  - loeg 9y ago
    Interviewing someone who will not pass is more expensive than not doing so.
    - coralreef 9y ago
      Its a sunk cost. You won't know if they pass or not until you interview them.
      - twblalock 9y ago
        What part is the sunk cost? Interviewing applicants takes time out of a lot of peoples' busy days. They don't have to spend that time if the company doesn't bring the applicant in for an interview.
        coralreef 9y ago
        That's obvious enough. Any recruiting funnel will have a criteria of requirements that the prospect needs to fulfill. Then they're brought in for a technical interview. There's no escaping that. You don't give automatically give them a job because they listed a 4.0 GPA on their CV and were nice on the phone.
        Buge 9y ago
        If you weed out a large percent due to low GPA, then you've saved time interviewing those people.
        coralreef 9y ago
        You would also weed out a lot of fantastic talent, who aren't motivated by school or didn't go to school. In programming, this is a significant amount of people.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        varjag 9y ago
        Ugh, plenty of people are not motivated by school, but manage to pass it with decent grades. I'd personally stay away from "talent" who can work just on the assignments they have genuine deep interest in.
  - johnfn 9y ago
    What percentage of applicants do they offer interviews to? How do you think they whittle that number down?
    - coralreef 9y ago
      I've never seen "GPA" as a requirement on an application before. Listing your GPA on your CV might help if its a good one, but I haven't seen data to support that.
      - lostboys67 9y ago
        Isn't most of the GPA not at all related to CS or STEM I am not sure learning how to do an essay on Thucydides or what have you - will help.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    I have never written code at an interview, in nearly 30 years.
    - taurath 9y ago
      At senior levels you will be judged by what you've made and your reputation. If you're a new hire you won't have much of either
sanderjd 9y ago
Unfortunately, unless that network of people includes people with hiring authority, it is not very helpful. Employers seem to put very little stock in references.
- twblalock 9y ago
  Having a personal connection is by far the best way to get a job in any field, including software. Employers care very much about references from people they know.
austenallred 9y ago
We optimize for what we can easily measure, even when it doesn't make sense to optimize for that thing.
blhack 9y ago
Grades are a thing becaue the people who pay for school curriculuum need a way of quantifying what they actually purchased.
glangdale 9y ago
The student can go a long way without "performing". They are ultimately given a passing grade to show that they have learned things adequately. The cost that we bear as a result of lax certification is that no-one will trust your grades, and that you'll have to do endless whiteboard exercises at every employer to independently verify what might have been otherwise inferred from a single, rigorous qualification process. It also creates a prestige problem for whatever university graduated some nitwit who can't code from a CS degree. Over time, it will be harder for other graduates from that university to find work. I'm amazed by comments like this, frankly. It reminds me of how far computer science is from being a genuine profession. Would anyone say stuff like this about the contents of architecture or engineering courses?
- twblalock 9y ago
  > It also creates a prestige problem for whatever university graduated some nitwit who can't code from a CS degree. Over time, it will be harder for other graduates from that university to find work. Coincidentally, this is being discussed in another thread today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14440780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14440780 Companies need to filter their applicants because some colleges don't do a good job filtering their graduates.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 9y ago
An undergraduate degree demonstrates to you what the characteristic activities of a field are like, and to observers that you can do those characteristic activities to some minimum standard. Almost no one proceeds under the illusion that it's a comprehensive education. At best, you'll master a subfield in graduate school. Continuous grading provides a valuable signal when you need to step up your game, transition to a different field, or drop out. I know several people whose poor CS grades sent them to tracks where they're now much happier and more successful.
elevensies 9y ago
For various reasons, people want to be able to evaluate students against each other, which requires a total ordering ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order ) For example, I didn't want to go to grad school or work for a megacorp, so I didn't have to worry about my grades. But a lot of my classmates did want those things, which require large scale impersonal evaluation, so they had to sweat about their grades.
VHRanger 9y ago
Education is both a signal to employers and an opportunity to build yourself as a person. For some it's mostly the former, for others the latter. It depends on the majors chosen and a bunch of other factors. The research in education is difficult to parse the individuals decision comes from which (some show that signalling does play a big part, though). My personal opinion is that, as more people get higher education, it becomes more of a signal -- the value of the signal of the degree is lessened, and by extension, the value of not having the degree is lessened even more. See the "Spence signalling model" for more on this. So you get dumbed down classes in the long run.
shados 9y ago
A network of people who will assert you know your stuff, right. Friends will say whatever you want them to say. A guy I worked with, who never shipped anything, had no idea how to code at all, who got black out wasted several times during company events, explicitely propositioned the male CTO (they were both straight), harassed every single women in the company (seriously, like, 100+) in just the amount of time it took to get the paperwork in order to fire him... And he found a new job at a freagin bank as a senior engineer 2 weeks later. Because "a network of people asserted he knew his stuff". (As to how he got hired in the first place...people "asserted he knew his stuff" and I assume he was pretty good at tricking people in interviews. Interview process sucked, mind you, but since people will get fussy if you ask them to code in an interview, well...)
jldugger 9y ago
> What's with the obsession with student assessment over student learning Surely you don't believe turning in someone else's work for an assignment counts as learning. At some level, we do need to know whether a student has learned the material. We assign homework because a) it's more efficient than lab assignments b) adult students grasp concepts best by doing. We grade them because we believe more students will do the work that leads to learning, because the students themselves want high grades (well, employers and scholarships do). I'd be happy to see someone try to teach an intro to CS course in a US flagship state school with homework optional, and grades purely based on tests. Would that meet your definition of student learning?
vultour 9y ago
The problem I see is that people don't learn. My university classes were full of people who were copy-pasting Stack Overflow answers everywhere they could and were getting relatively good grades. The same people had no idea what open source was, and couldn't solve problems they encountered multiple times before without SO.

johnfn 9y ago

Saves time. It's a lot easier to determine if you are capable from "my GPA is x" rather than having someone sit down and write code for a few hours and doing a code review.

taurath 9y ago
Everyone does code review or whiteboards now in industry at least - it's not as if you're offered a residency or job after you get a degree unless it's a pretty good degree with some actual interviewing.
- loeg 9y ago
  Interviewing someone who will not pass is more expensive than not doing so.
  - coralreef 9y ago
    Its a sunk cost. You won't know if they pass or not until you interview them.
    - twblalock 9y ago
      What part is the sunk cost? Interviewing applicants takes time out of a lot of peoples' busy days. They don't have to spend that time if the company doesn't bring the applicant in for an interview.
      - coralreef 9y ago
        That's obvious enough. Any recruiting funnel will have a criteria of requirements that the prospect needs to fulfill. Then they're brought in for a technical interview. There's no escaping that. You don't give automatically give them a job because they listed a 4.0 GPA on their CV and were nice on the phone.
        Buge 9y ago
        If you weed out a large percent due to low GPA, then you've saved time interviewing those people.
        coralreef 9y ago
        You would also weed out a lot of fantastic talent, who aren't motivated by school or didn't go to school. In programming, this is a significant amount of people.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        varjag 9y ago
        Ugh, plenty of people are not motivated by school, but manage to pass it with decent grades. I'd personally stay away from "talent" who can work just on the assignments they have genuine deep interest in.
- johnfn 9y ago
  What percentage of applicants do they offer interviews to? How do you think they whittle that number down?
  - coralreef 9y ago
    I've never seen "GPA" as a requirement on an application before. Listing your GPA on your CV might help if its a good one, but I haven't seen data to support that.
    - lostboys67 9y ago
      Isn't most of the GPA not at all related to CS or STEM I am not sure learning how to do an essay on Thucydides or what have you - will help.
- ams6110 9y ago
  I have never written code at an interview, in nearly 30 years.
  - taurath 9y ago
    At senior levels you will be judged by what you've made and your reputation. If you're a new hire you won't have much of either

sanderjd 9y ago

Unfortunately, unless that network of people includes people with hiring authority, it is not very helpful. Employers seem to put very little stock in references.

twblalock 9y ago
Having a personal connection is by far the best way to get a job in any field, including software. Employers care very much about references from people they know.

austenallred 9y ago

We optimize for what we can easily measure, even when it doesn't make sense to optimize for that thing.

blhack 9y ago

Grades are a thing becaue the people who pay for school curriculuum need a way of quantifying what they actually purchased.

glangdale 9y ago

The student can go a long way without "performing". They are ultimately given a passing grade to show that they have learned things adequately. The cost that we bear as a result of lax certification is that no-one will trust your grades, and that you'll have to do endless whiteboard exercises at every employer to independently verify what might have been otherwise inferred from a single, rigorous qualification process. It also creates a prestige problem for whatever university graduated some nitwit who can't code from a CS degree. Over time, it will be harder for other graduates from that university to find work. I'm amazed by comments like this, frankly. It reminds me of how far computer science is from being a genuine profession. Would anyone say stuff like this about the contents of architecture or engineering courses?

twblalock 9y ago
> It also creates a prestige problem for whatever university graduated some nitwit who can't code from a CS degree. Over time, it will be harder for other graduates from that university to find work. Coincidentally, this is being discussed in another thread today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14440780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14440780 Companies need to filter their applicants because some colleges don't do a good job filtering their graduates.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

closeparen 9y ago

An undergraduate degree demonstrates to you what the characteristic activities of a field are like, and to observers that you can do those characteristic activities to some minimum standard. Almost no one proceeds under the illusion that it's a comprehensive education. At best, you'll master a subfield in graduate school. Continuous grading provides a valuable signal when you need to step up your game, transition to a different field, or drop out. I know several people whose poor CS grades sent them to tracks where they're now much happier and more successful.

elevensies 9y ago

For various reasons, people want to be able to evaluate students against each other, which requires a total ordering ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order ) For example, I didn't want to go to grad school or work for a megacorp, so I didn't have to worry about my grades. But a lot of my classmates did want those things, which require large scale impersonal evaluation, so they had to sweat about their grades.

VHRanger 9y ago

Education is both a signal to employers and an opportunity to build yourself as a person. For some it's mostly the former, for others the latter. It depends on the majors chosen and a bunch of other factors. The research in education is difficult to parse the individuals decision comes from which (some show that signalling does play a big part, though). My personal opinion is that, as more people get higher education, it becomes more of a signal -- the value of the signal of the degree is lessened, and by extension, the value of not having the degree is lessened even more. See the "Spence signalling model" for more on this. So you get dumbed down classes in the long run.

shados 9y ago

A network of people who will assert you know your stuff, right. Friends will say whatever you want them to say. A guy I worked with, who never shipped anything, had no idea how to code at all, who got black out wasted several times during company events, explicitely propositioned the male CTO (they were both straight), harassed every single women in the company (seriously, like, 100+) in just the amount of time it took to get the paperwork in order to fire him... And he found a new job at a freagin bank as a senior engineer 2 weeks later. Because "a network of people asserted he knew his stuff". (As to how he got hired in the first place...people "asserted he knew his stuff" and I assume he was pretty good at tricking people in interviews. Interview process sucked, mind you, but since people will get fussy if you ask them to code in an interview, well...)

jldugger 9y ago

> What's with the obsession with student assessment over student learning Surely you don't believe turning in someone else's work for an assignment counts as learning. At some level, we do need to know whether a student has learned the material. We assign homework because a) it's more efficient than lab assignments b) adult students grasp concepts best by doing. We grade them because we believe more students will do the work that leads to learning, because the students themselves want high grades (well, employers and scholarships do). I'd be happy to see someone try to teach an intro to CS course in a US flagship state school with homework optional, and grades purely based on tests. Would that meet your definition of student learning?

vultour 9y ago

The problem I see is that people don't learn. My university classes were full of people who were copy-pasting Stack Overflow answers everywhere they could and were getting relatively good grades. The same people had no idea what open source was, and couldn't solve problems they encountered multiple times before without SO.