4 ms·

I mean I want to agree with this, but I also have to ask why? In what way are grades important to any kind of overall outcome?

dkersten 7y ago
I don't think the grades themselves really matter, but the difficulty ceiling does. That is, if a top grade is hard, it gives people something to strive for and challenge themselves to achieve and, the people that do, will be a lot better for it. If, on the other hand, the top grade is relatively easy, then the people who would have been challenged get bored and don't become as great as they would have if they'd been challenged, and the rest get amazing (but meaningless[1] grades without necessarily having much skill in the subject. People learn and improve by being at the edge of their competency. When I was studying, to me, the grade was just a benchmark to measure my progress against, but otherwise wasn't something that I was particularly concerned about (in second level, I only cared that I good good enough grades to get the Uni placement I wanted, but beyond that, it meant very little and means absolutely nothing to me now. And third level... I've literally never told anyone[2] what grades I got on my degree. It seems that having a relevant degree at all is a ticked checkbox, but that's about it. Once you have some experience, that's all anybody ever cared about, at least, for me). [1] But I guess even if the spread/variance of grades was high (rather than everyone being clumped at the top because its too easy to get good grades), grades aren't a great indicator for many reasons, so the utility is probably limited either way. [2] In the context of trying to get a job, at least.
bilbo0s 7y ago
I agree. Grades are, to my mind, a social ranking mechanism. The more important question is, "does everyone coming out of university of whatever with a degree in nuclear engineering, actually have an entry level knowledge of nuclear engineering?"
jonnycomputer 7y ago
In my data structures course, the final exam was about 50 pages of difficult, tricky problems. I completed maybe 8 of them and got a B+. The instructor told us that only one student in his career had completed the entire exam. As an approach I think this makes a lot of sense. First it gives the very best students an opportunity to really show their stuff. For the others, it gives them the opportunity to pick and choose the problems to show that they've at least mastered some of the material (generally, there is often more presented than can realistically be mastered of the course of a semester (between and within each course)). (nested parens are (the best))
- tomsmeding 7y ago
  I'd think that making an exam like that is a hellish amount of work. One might propose that students are definitely not going to remember all of that, so you can basically reuse stuff from previous years anyway, but that's not how the world works, sadly.
  - jonnycomputer 7y ago
    He gave us previous exams as study guides. The questions were similar, but not exactly the same.
  - MisterBastahrd 7y ago
    I think making an exam like that is silly. Except for research work and startups, you aren't ever going to go into a job and just decided to only tackle certain problems. I had a history professor who gave a test in this manner: Below there are 3 columns of 14 items of interest, whether they be people or wars or treaties or whatever. You are allowed to cross out 2 columns, and then cross out 3 terms. Write what you know about the remaining terms. Your grade is out of 110 on a 100 point scale. Now, I loved the test, because I excel at soft trivia tests... but did it really gauge what I understood about history? Nope. It gauged my knowledge of history trivia for those terms. Understanding history is about understanding how these things connect together. If I were a history professor, I would base the majority of students' grades on papers about the subjects we cover in class to discover whether they're actually thinking about history or if they're just trying to recite facts and figures.
    - asdff 7y ago
      I think it depends on what is being put in these exams, like if you are being given rote memory trivia or asked to write out a little essay with arguments supported by historical examples for those topics, that would be a tougher exam that asked you to think about history. For a calc final I took, it was 7 pages, 7 problems, 3 hours, and you were only graded on your best 6. Each of those six problems tested very intimate knowledge on specific topics in calc, but if you weren't so strong in one area you could focus on where you can shine, or if something was a walk for you it gave you more time for the tricky problems.
michaelt 7y ago
1. We could get rid of whiteboard interviews if CS degree grades communicated the same information. 2. A lot of the moral case for education debt is that it's good long-term value. People graduating from CS education without the education needed to get a good job don't get that value, making the moral case far murkier.

dkersten 7y ago

I don't think the grades themselves really matter, but the difficulty ceiling does. That is, if a top grade is hard, it gives people something to strive for and challenge themselves to achieve and, the people that do, will be a lot better for it. If, on the other hand, the top grade is relatively easy, then the people who would have been challenged get bored and don't become as great as they would have if they'd been challenged, and the rest get amazing (but meaningless[1] grades without necessarily having much skill in the subject. People learn and improve by being at the edge of their competency. When I was studying, to me, the grade was just a benchmark to measure my progress against, but otherwise wasn't something that I was particularly concerned about (in second level, I only cared that I good good enough grades to get the Uni placement I wanted, but beyond that, it meant very little and means absolutely nothing to me now. And third level... I've literally never told anyone[2] what grades I got on my degree. It seems that having a relevant degree at all is a ticked checkbox, but that's about it. Once you have some experience, that's all anybody ever cared about, at least, for me). [1] But I guess even if the spread/variance of grades was high (rather than everyone being clumped at the top because its too easy to get good grades), grades aren't a great indicator for many reasons, so the utility is probably limited either way. [2] In the context of trying to get a job, at least.

bilbo0s 7y ago

I agree. Grades are, to my mind, a social ranking mechanism. The more important question is, "does everyone coming out of university of whatever with a degree in nuclear engineering, actually have an entry level knowledge of nuclear engineering?"

jonnycomputer 7y ago

In my data structures course, the final exam was about 50 pages of difficult, tricky problems. I completed maybe 8 of them and got a B+. The instructor told us that only one student in his career had completed the entire exam. As an approach I think this makes a lot of sense. First it gives the very best students an opportunity to really show their stuff. For the others, it gives them the opportunity to pick and choose the problems to show that they've at least mastered some of the material (generally, there is often more presented than can realistically be mastered of the course of a semester (between and within each course)). (nested parens are (the best))

tomsmeding 7y ago
I'd think that making an exam like that is a hellish amount of work. One might propose that students are definitely not going to remember all of that, so you can basically reuse stuff from previous years anyway, but that's not how the world works, sadly.
- jonnycomputer 7y ago
  He gave us previous exams as study guides. The questions were similar, but not exactly the same.
- MisterBastahrd 7y ago
  I think making an exam like that is silly. Except for research work and startups, you aren't ever going to go into a job and just decided to only tackle certain problems. I had a history professor who gave a test in this manner: Below there are 3 columns of 14 items of interest, whether they be people or wars or treaties or whatever. You are allowed to cross out 2 columns, and then cross out 3 terms. Write what you know about the remaining terms. Your grade is out of 110 on a 100 point scale. Now, I loved the test, because I excel at soft trivia tests... but did it really gauge what I understood about history? Nope. It gauged my knowledge of history trivia for those terms. Understanding history is about understanding how these things connect together. If I were a history professor, I would base the majority of students' grades on papers about the subjects we cover in class to discover whether they're actually thinking about history or if they're just trying to recite facts and figures.
  - asdff 7y ago
    I think it depends on what is being put in these exams, like if you are being given rote memory trivia or asked to write out a little essay with arguments supported by historical examples for those topics, that would be a tougher exam that asked you to think about history. For a calc final I took, it was 7 pages, 7 problems, 3 hours, and you were only graded on your best 6. Each of those six problems tested very intimate knowledge on specific topics in calc, but if you weren't so strong in one area you could focus on where you can shine, or if something was a walk for you it gave you more time for the tricky problems.

michaelt 7y ago

1. We could get rid of whiteboard interviews if CS degree grades communicated the same information. 2. A lot of the moral case for education debt is that it's good long-term value. People graduating from CS education without the education needed to get a good job don't get that value, making the moral case far murkier.