It always puzzled me why you got multiple grades in any particular class. I always thought that the object of a class was to master some body of subject matter.

It always puzzled me why you got multiple grades in any particular class. I always thought that the object of a class was to master some body of subject matter. If that’s the case, then the most obvious objective way to rate students is a single grade on a final examination. I realize that most people don’t like this because it puts too much emphasis and stress on a single event, but it measures your mastery of the subject. You could adopt such a system and maintain the general current pattern of education by changing the grading of projects and tests (before the final) to be diagnostic in nature. By this, I mean that instead of assigning a letter grade, The instructor should map individual questions and project feedback to a rubric for the class. In this way both you and the instructor can see the areas of the rubric that you have mastered in the areas where you still need work. Great instructors could even use that to tailor future work individually to the student to maximize their mastery of the rubric. This even lends itself to standardization. For example, instead of an instructor designed or department designed final exam, you could use some form of standardized test. Just like industry has certifications, professional societies and other organizations could develop exams to demonstrate mastery of a body of knowledge, and these could be administered instead of an institutional exam. Further, with this methodology we are emphasizing the outcome, not the process. Now, you can objectively measure how well specific institutions or even instructors prepare their students for these exams. And if the rubric for the body of knowledge that the exam tests, is public, then one can learn on their own and can demonstrate mastery of the body of knowledge just by taking the exam. Or, by taking the class online, or preparing using test prep books and sample tests, etc. Further, if someone developed curricula to specify which bodies of knowledge are required for a particular degree, then conceivably one could have degrees without universities. To prove you have the degree, you would simply need to provide evidence that you passed each of the exams for each of the bodies of knowledge in the degree requirement. I know this is a weird thought, and there are lots of problems with standardized testing, but this would be a way to end the financial tyranny of the current university system, at least in the United States.