4 ms·
At the risk of sounding naive, I think grades are overrated, to the point that they may indeed kill the spirit of learning. To make matters worse, the US system
by ez77 15y ago
At the risk of sounding naive, I think grades are overrated, to the point that they may indeed kill the spirit of learning. To make matters worse, the US system has way too many grades: quizzes, exams, assignments, extra-credit (!) assignments, finals, etc. That's a lot, particularly for a college system.
As a start, I would dare the top US universities to do away with grades and let prospective employers segregate the fine from the best without the beaten GPAs. I bet they would produce even better graduates. (The new requirement(s) for graduation would, of course, demand some creativity.)
- bartonfink 15y agoMy understanding is that top law schools do something like that already - limiting themselves to pass/fail grading across the board. The 50th percentile at, e.g., Harvard Law, is almost certainly going to be a very capable attorney, and it does Harvard Law no good to create artificial distinctions between students solely for the benefit of the outside world. If a student wants to show some sort of distinction, he has to find some out-of-band way to do that (research for a prof, publications, exceptional internships, etc).
- barry-cotter 15y agoI believe Harvard Law has trivially obvious class rank from GPA metrics. Yale grades Pass/Fail.
- bartonfink 15y agoEntirely possible - I can't speak to school specifics. I just know of the practice third-hand from a friend who considered transferring because he was bored with his first year elsewhere.