>Isn't a grade supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic? University education largely isn't about certifying that certain students know

>Isn't a grade supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic? University education largely isn't about certifying that certain students know certain things. It's about showing that people who possess the degree meet a minimum IQ + trait conscientiousness cutoff, so that employers can preferentially hire those people. Grades have several purposes in this framework. First is to drop low-employee-quality students so that the signal for the remainder is stronger. Second is to allow honors and GPA to provide multiple cutoff-levels to fine-tune the signaling. Third is to force re-taking of classes to extract more money out of folks who want to substitute it for IQ + effort. As it stands, your proposed change would simply increase the amount of work that is allowed to be used as a bid for class position. That's not particularly helpful, IMO.