3 ms·

When the good students are Asians and the bad students are minorities, I can see this being canceled pretty quickly as being a racist policy. It makes sense to

by eloff 4y ago

When the good students are Asians and the bad students are minorities, I can see this being canceled pretty quickly as being a racist policy. It makes sense to my engineer’s brain though. Why wouldn’t you want a meritocracy.

flutas 4y ago
> I can see this being canceled pretty quickly as being a racist policy. That's where my first thought went to as well, basically it being nuked from orbit due to racial bias. Second thought was it would probably be really bad PR and spun as "THIS COLLEGE IS BUYING GRADES!"
bitshiftfaced 4y ago
Probably just stop at the attendance incentive without going into grades. It would probably be more palatable to the higher-ups if the incentive was low-key, like if it went towards your food-court balance.
- chucksmash 4y ago
  Also money for grades would give people more incentive to cheat. "I can't afford to get a B this semester."
saagarjha 4y ago
Merit, or race, has nothing to do with wanting to attend classes.
- com2kid 4y ago
  Income and society-economic standing does. Plenty of people work jobs while going to college, a perfect attendance record is not their goal, clawing their way out of poverty is.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    I went to college in my parent’s dime and skipped well over half the classes I was supposed to attend (some of which because I had intentionally double-booked them). My point is that using attendance as some sort of measure of “merit” is very divorced from the reasons students choose not to attend classes. It can be because they’re lazy and don’t care, but it’s also often (as you mentioned) because they have other things they have to do, or just don’t see the value in attending.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      > My point is that using attendance as some sort of measure of "merit" No, I'm not proposing it be a measure of merit. Or a "measure" of anything. It's an incentive to attend classes, nothing more. > or just don’t see the value in attending. This is the oddest and also most interesting remark. If they don't see value in attending then why are they on the course? And, if they don't see value then they are free to exercise the right not to come and to forgo the financial reward too, and surely nothing is lost? I think buried behind some arguments here (perhaps not yours specifically) is the idea that we ought to simply make degrees something you pay for - by enrolling you get the certificate and the courses are non-assessed. In that case performance, attendance and participation become a different orthogonal quality prospects. It's a proposal that has quite some support amongst my colleagues and which I've argued for here[1] [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-student-apocalypse https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-stud...
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        Well I can tell you I didn't attend classes I thought were not worth going to. Usually this either meant that I already knew the material, could learn the material externally (either because lecture slides got posted, or I would just go look up things myself), or I thought the class itself was irrelevant.
- eloff 4y ago
  Did you miss the bit about grades?
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    It was a more thorny discussion I didn't feel like I was interested exploring.

by eloff 4y ago

flutas 4y ago

> I can see this being canceled pretty quickly as being a racist policy. That's where my first thought went to as well, basically it being nuked from orbit due to racial bias. Second thought was it would probably be really bad PR and spun as "THIS COLLEGE IS BUYING GRADES!"

bitshiftfaced 4y ago

Probably just stop at the attendance incentive without going into grades. It would probably be more palatable to the higher-ups if the incentive was low-key, like if it went towards your food-court balance.

chucksmash 4y ago
Also money for grades would give people more incentive to cheat. "I can't afford to get a B this semester."

saagarjha 4y ago

Merit, or race, has nothing to do with wanting to attend classes.

com2kid 4y ago
Income and society-economic standing does. Plenty of people work jobs while going to college, a perfect attendance record is not their goal, clawing their way out of poverty is.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  I went to college in my parent’s dime and skipped well over half the classes I was supposed to attend (some of which because I had intentionally double-booked them). My point is that using attendance as some sort of measure of “merit” is very divorced from the reasons students choose not to attend classes. It can be because they’re lazy and don’t care, but it’s also often (as you mentioned) because they have other things they have to do, or just don’t see the value in attending.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > My point is that using attendance as some sort of measure of "merit" No, I'm not proposing it be a measure of merit. Or a "measure" of anything. It's an incentive to attend classes, nothing more. > or just don’t see the value in attending. This is the oddest and also most interesting remark. If they don't see value in attending then why are they on the course? And, if they don't see value then they are free to exercise the right not to come and to forgo the financial reward too, and surely nothing is lost? I think buried behind some arguments here (perhaps not yours specifically) is the idea that we ought to simply make degrees something you pay for - by enrolling you get the certificate and the courses are non-assessed. In that case performance, attendance and participation become a different orthogonal quality prospects. It's a proposal that has quite some support amongst my colleagues and which I've argued for here[1] [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-student-apocalypse https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-stud...
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Well I can tell you I didn't attend classes I thought were not worth going to. Usually this either meant that I already knew the material, could learn the material externally (either because lecture slides got posted, or I would just go look up things myself), or I thought the class itself was irrelevant.
eloff 4y ago
Did you miss the bit about grades?
- saagarjha 4y ago
  It was a more thorny discussion I didn't feel like I was interested exploring.