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if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable

if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable real world skill.

kunjaan 16y ago
There are deficiencies in certain grading schemes but "eliminating grades" is too radical and impractical solutions. How do you think we should evaluate the students at the end of the semester?
rick888 16y ago
"if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable real world skill." Grades many times give you the push you need to succeed. Without them, many people wouldn't bother studying. A similar thing that happened recently in many public schools is the elimination of winners and losers in sports games (every game is a tie). Is this really going to prepare anybody for the real world? The only people "gaming the system" aren't interested in learning and probably shouldn't be in college in the first place.
- eru 16y ago
  > Without them, many people wouldn't bother studying. With them, many people don't bother studying.
  - rick888 16y ago
    "With them, many people don't bother studying." Why? Because they are afraid of failing?
    - eru 16y ago
      Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades. (I do not want to claim that grades cause non-studying. Just that even with grades non-studying does occur--thus invalidating the grandfather-comment's argument.)
      - rick888 16y ago
        "Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades." Some. But why cater to the minority? If the grade system wasn't working, we would see more problems in schools and universities. I also don't really know of a good alternative.
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    Yup, pretty much what the article is all about. Only a handful of schools, like Yale Med, don't have grades.
    - eru 16y ago
      Strangely, I find myself in favour of marking exams (i.e. pointing out flaws and good points, maybe giving a score). Feedback is nice. But I am not in favour of grades for a class. Although taking some kind of weighted average of the scores of individual tests is more or less trivial, I resent it. Perhaps having one final test is a better option? I don't know.
      - rick888 16y ago
        "Strangely, I find myself in favour of marking exams (i.e. pointing out flaws and good points, maybe giving a score), but not so much in favour of grades." How does one fail a class if there are no grades? We can't let everyone pass (especially in something like medical school)
        eru 16y ago
        Don't let anybody pass. I guess in general we should disentangle teaching with accreditation. I.e. the institution that grades you, should not be the one that collects your tuition money. Just to prevent conflicts of interest. (Letting somebody pass in medical school might be a different topic, I agree.)
        SkyMarshal 16y ago
        It's pass/fail, so you can still fail. Something like 70% or below is failing. You still get graded on work, but the classes themselves don't result in a GPA, just pass or fail. I know the idea at Yale is that the students have proven they're hard-working, smart, and dedicated to being doctors, so they don't need to be run through that gauntlet again. Yale would rather them focus on really learning rather than gaming the grading system for a better class rank.
jseliger 16y ago
A few schools, like Evergreen in Washington State, have done precisely this. The other problem is that grades still solve some practical problems, which I discuss here: http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades . Not having grades will probably encourage system gaming too, just in a different (and probably worse) way than one has now.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Note: the effects may or may not be worse, however in the inter-rim present (say the next 40 years) our teaching staff would have no way to understand how the system is being gamed. You'd be changing the sport without changing the referee, an umpire can't referee a football game. Changing from grades and teachers who've learnt graded systems and inherently learnt the systems pitfalls is a much better compromise than changing the system to no grades with teachers who've learnt graded systems and inherently have no knowledge on the pitfalls of an ungraded system. We could overall decrease the ability to game the system, however we wouldn't be able to adapt our teachers as fast as we could change the system. Our students would be as knowledgeable of the system as our teachers, which is like turning our entire system of educators into fresh-faced Teacher's School graduates. It would quite possibly be the death of education for the next decade.

if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable real world skill.

kunjaan 16y ago

There are deficiencies in certain grading schemes but "eliminating grades" is too radical and impractical solutions. How do you think we should evaluate the students at the end of the semester?

rick888 16y ago

"if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable real world skill." Grades many times give you the push you need to succeed. Without them, many people wouldn't bother studying. A similar thing that happened recently in many public schools is the elimination of winners and losers in sports games (every game is a tie). Is this really going to prepare anybody for the real world? The only people "gaming the system" aren't interested in learning and probably shouldn't be in college in the first place.

eru 16y ago
> Without them, many people wouldn't bother studying. With them, many people don't bother studying.
- rick888 16y ago
  "With them, many people don't bother studying." Why? Because they are afraid of failing?
  - eru 16y ago
    Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades. (I do not want to claim that grades cause non-studying. Just that even with grades non-studying does occur--thus invalidating the grandfather-comment's argument.)
    - rick888 16y ago
      "Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades." Some. But why cater to the minority? If the grade system wasn't working, we would see more problems in schools and universities. I also don't really know of a good alternative.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Yup, pretty much what the article is all about. Only a handful of schools, like Yale Med, don't have grades.
  - eru 16y ago
    Strangely, I find myself in favour of marking exams (i.e. pointing out flaws and good points, maybe giving a score). Feedback is nice. But I am not in favour of grades for a class. Although taking some kind of weighted average of the scores of individual tests is more or less trivial, I resent it. Perhaps having one final test is a better option? I don't know.
    - rick888 16y ago
      "Strangely, I find myself in favour of marking exams (i.e. pointing out flaws and good points, maybe giving a score), but not so much in favour of grades." How does one fail a class if there are no grades? We can't let everyone pass (especially in something like medical school)
      - eru 16y ago
        Don't let anybody pass. I guess in general we should disentangle teaching with accreditation. I.e. the institution that grades you, should not be the one that collects your tuition money. Just to prevent conflicts of interest. (Letting somebody pass in medical school might be a different topic, I agree.)
      - SkyMarshal 16y ago
        It's pass/fail, so you can still fail. Something like 70% or below is failing. You still get graded on work, but the classes themselves don't result in a GPA, just pass or fail. I know the idea at Yale is that the students have proven they're hard-working, smart, and dedicated to being doctors, so they don't need to be run through that gauntlet again. Yale would rather them focus on really learning rather than gaming the grading system for a better class rank.

jseliger 16y ago

A few schools, like Evergreen in Washington State, have done precisely this. The other problem is that grades still solve some practical problems, which I discuss here: http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades . Not having grades will probably encourage system gaming too, just in a different (and probably worse) way than one has now.

electromagnetic 16y ago
Note: the effects may or may not be worse, however in the inter-rim present (say the next 40 years) our teaching staff would have no way to understand how the system is being gamed. You'd be changing the sport without changing the referee, an umpire can't referee a football game. Changing from grades and teachers who've learnt graded systems and inherently learnt the systems pitfalls is a much better compromise than changing the system to no grades with teachers who've learnt graded systems and inherently have no knowledge on the pitfalls of an ungraded system. We could overall decrease the ability to game the system, however we wouldn't be able to adapt our teachers as fast as we could change the system. Our students would be as knowledgeable of the system as our teachers, which is like turning our entire system of educators into fresh-faced Teacher's School graduates. It would quite possibly be the death of education for the next decade.