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To help new students adapt, some colleges are eliminating grades

kazinator 3y ago
A degree from a university that has gotten rid of grades will not be worth much compared to one that hasn't. > If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A, "they didn't learn anything," said Greene. And "if the student came in and struggled to get a C-plus, they may have learned a lot." Sorry, Jody Greene, you're out to lunch here. The grade is assigned by the lecturer of a course, as a confirmation that the student knows a thing or two about certain fixed topics. If the student learned about those topics somewhere else before taking the course, they earned that A just as much as someone who learned it in the course. It is extremely important to intellectual freedom that the time and place where some knowledge or skills were attained is considered immaterial. The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent. I dare say, an attack on Western civilization's intellectual legacy. > And so if we were to shift our focus on to learning and away from grades, we would be able to tell whether we were graduating people with the skills that we say we're graduating them with." To "tell whether you are graduating people with skills", you need a test of those skills. That's a grade. A skill test could actually be a lot harder than earning grades in some disciplines. For instance, if we expect that computer science graduates ought to be skilled software developers and start testing that, it will be a shitshow.
- deleted 3y ago
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- zamnos 3y ago
  Depends if that university is MIT or Harvard, or somewhere else. But also, you know what they call the dude who got C's at medical school? Doctor.
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- wanttocomment 3y ago
  I would guess 80% of the career value is captured by satisfying admissions and graduating. I think the actual grading isn't looked at except to rank similar peers for admission to other competitive programs.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    This is exactly why companies should drop degree requirements. If 80% of the degree requirements are met when you graduate from HS (and I would say it's more than 80%), then why make them wait 4 years and take on a pile of debt?
    - bumby 3y ago
      OP didn’t specifically saying graduating high school. I read the post as graduating college was part of that 80%
- Mezzie 3y ago
  > If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A, "they didn't learn anything," said Greene Also, the fuck they didn't. They learned patience (have to listen to/discuss other people's questions even if they're stupid to you) and the ability to do tasks that are boring/tedious/something you've already done before - 2 qualities that are excellent to have when working. If you're used to picking things up quickly, learning to handle boring and tedious environments is probably the best skill you could take out of your schooling. How many meetings have we all sat in where we just have to sit there until somebody important reaches the conclusion we reached in 10 minutes?
  - mordae 3y ago
    Not working. Being employed. There is a difference.
    - Mezzie 3y ago
      Good clarification, thanks!
  - sieongioetnio 3y ago
    That could be learned working the checkout line at a grocery store. I think universities can aim a little higher.
    - Mezzie 3y ago
      The average kid who is that bright or in that situation is not being asked to work a check-out line. We recognize that it isn't an efficient use of their talent. That kid is doing side projects or taking internships. They have to pick up some patience somewhere.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Was already worthless when they dropped standardized test requirements for admission.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  In western countries, the basis of understanding and discourse is transitioning from reason to feelings.
- dalbasal 3y ago
  >The grade is assigned by the lecturer of a course, as a confirmation that the student knows a thing or two about certain fixed topics. That's an idea of what grades are and what they're for. It's not the idea. I would call this an ideal, often fallen short of, and often misguided. In practice, grades are used in all sorts of ways for all sort of reasons. Many times, they are used for no good reason. The idea that tests are impartial accreditation is abstract. It rarely plays in reality. There's a place for GMEDs, bar exams, TOEFLS and whatnot... but it's limited. >It is extremely important to intellectual freedom that the time and place where some knowledge or skills were attained is considered immaterial. > The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent It's abhorrent only within the accreditation framework of ideals. This just isn't reality. That objectivity ideal for education is always betrayed because it doesn't work. People don't value exam results, in their own right, because they're not that valuable in their own right. A course's job irl is to educate, not accredit.
  - bumby 3y ago
    >A course's job irl is to educate, not accredit But a course is part of a larger system which is built on accreditation. Universities no longer have a monopoly on information/education so accreditation is really the main value they hold. Erode that and there’s not much vocational reason to go to college (we could argue about the role of higher education, but it’s been more vocationally focused than civically focused going back to the Morrill act in the mid 1800s)
    - dalbasal 3y ago
      >Universities no longer have a monopoly on information/education so accreditation is really the main value they hold. Erode that and there’s not much vocational reason to go to college. Again, I think this is idealistic thinking... and doesn't have much to do with universities irl. Whether or not an MIT degree is an accreditation, it is not an objective, grades based accreditation. It never was. There has never been a world where your bar exam results matter, and no one cares about where you went to law school. An MIT degree does not mean "passed the MIT exams." Universities never really had monopoly over knowledge. Every university teaches the same accounting courses. They're also online. There is even a well respected 3rd party accreditation. People still care about where they, their employees or their accountants were educated. We can debate why this is the case. We can't ignore that it is the case. The university matters, almost always, to the people involved... Accreditation matters sometimes, but usually only as a minimum bar. Neither education nor accreditation guarantee ability.
- prepend 3y ago
  This seems funny to me as well as the point of learning isn’t the actual learning, it’s the knowledge gained. That’s why we learn. Yes the journey is valuable but the purpose of classes isn’t to measure learningness as a process, but to measure the knowledge and skills gained. If someone already knew material and learned nothing and got an A, it means they have knowledge of that topic and now there’s a little more signal of that knowledge. It doesn’t matter that they went from 90% knowledge to 95%. If someone got a C+ and went from 0-78% knowledge they learned much but still can’t demonstrate much knowledge. If we wanted a course on learning processes specifically, then create one. But thinking that the point of grades is measuring how much was learned seems so backwards. It’s good to recognize effort, but the point of effort is to achieve an outcome, not the outcome itself. “Prepend is so great, ve works so hard. Totally sucks and is stupid but works so hard.” Is silly if used for ability to do a particular thing, but useful in measuring grit and discipline or whatever.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  Greene's take on education is very odd. Should I be considered not to have a CS degree because I did not need to learn anything to pass the classes? I would often leave myself a gap of 1 hour between project deadlines and when I would start on them, because I knew I needed 30 minutes to 45 minutes to complete them. I'd spend the remaining 15 minutes before class correcting the errors in the assignment and submitting those to the instructor as proposed revisions. I had a high school professor that just gave us the university's Chemistry introduction series (200 level, if that matters) as our high school curriculum. I didn't learn much in those classes at university, mostly because I had already completed the work.
- sieongioetnio 3y ago
  > A degree from a university that has gotten rid of grades will not be worth much compared to one that hasn't. You may be surprised to learn that quite a few well-regarded universities adopted this sort of policy years ago. In particular, grading freshmen pass/fail is not uncommon. >The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent. Whoa, Nelly! No one is talking about refusing degrees to students who read too much. I don't know where you got that idea. It definitely wasn't from Jody Greene. Right now, attending university is both an education and a credential. These two goals are in tension, and both are compromised as a result. Students should be able to pursue an education without fear that trying something challenging will permanently affect their career. Employers looking for proof of knowledge shouldn't care where or how that knowledge was learned. >To "tell whether you are graduating people with skills", you need a test of those skills. Right. >That's a grade. Wrong. Traditional letter grades are one way of measuring mastery, but the interviewees in this article describe a few alternatives. Sadly they don't describe these alternatives in detail. I wish this article were a bit more nuts-and-bolts. It leaves more questions than it answers.
dekhn 3y ago
I went to UCSC, which at the time was known for not having grades. Instead, teachers wrote "narrative evaluations" which were slightly more personalized and detailed. In most science classes, the evals were generated programmatically based on your test scores. When applying to grad school, I had to provide a GPA so I made an estimate (which I clearly stated was an estimate) and gave myself a 3.5. I believe UCSC has moved towards having more conventional grades. But, for me, not having grades was really nice. I hated the whole race to get high scores. But I don't think narrative evals really make much sense in classes with 100+ students.
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- asah 3y ago
  I can imagine LLMs providing much richer evals...
- Balgair 3y ago
  Fellow Slug here. They had grades by the time I went there and I used them for grad school applications. But, they still have the narrative evals (Please be right!). My evals were critical for my grad school applications. All the PIs that I talked with said that they reviewed mine, mostly because it was so unique to have a 50+ page transcript. Their reviewing of my evals was what got me into a few places. Personally, I treasure those evals. Some were pretty bland and report-y, but enough are good descriptions of myself at a young age from otherwise unbiased observers. Those deeper and longer evals are fantastic and really helped me grow as a young person. Taking them seriously and chewing through them allowed me to choose the right major and the right path, for me, at the time. Likely, they're gone by now, subsumed into the grind of academia. But I hope they aren't. They were really special and really helpful.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I don't think my grad program read my narrative evals. Their process is to basically make a stack of applicants and anybody with a GPA lower than 3.5 or so is rejected without any further inspection. An application without a GPA would also be rejected immediately. Fortunately, my conversion table ("Excellent = 4.0, Very Good = 3.5") made the cutoff!
roody15 3y ago
“ Grades are not a representation of student learning, as hard as it is for us to break the mindset that if the student got an A it means they learned," This is a faulty premise. The point of grades is not to reflect growth or improvement. Instead grades are meant to represent mastery of a certain topic / subject.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  It’s an expected perspective from someone steeped in the humanities as there is no objective ground truth in the subject.
helen___keller 3y ago
Silly as this sounds, if it’s just freshman year, that would mean that your graduating GPA is weighted more heavily towards non-intro classes, which i view as a plus overall. My chops as a computer science graduate was about my mastery of algorithms, compilers, and automata when I was 22, not of discrete math when I was 18.
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  Yeah the intro classes were the worst grades for me. Subjects less interesting, grading more random
- lfmunoz4 3y ago
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nobodyandproud 3y ago
Keep the grades, but build on each student’s strengths? We waste a lot of time during middle school and high school grooming them for liberal arts prep. Instead, high school is when kids should be allowed to narrow down, cultivate, and build their foundational skills of interest. Sports? Technical? Arts? Then in the final years allow them to branch if they wish but also to demonstrate and show how much they don’t know. Instead, every high school has turned into liberal arts college prep; then we do it again for bachelors. Waste of time classes for me: Spanish 2/3, English and composition, general sciences (the broad one that covers all sciences in one course)
- fauxpause_ 3y ago
  Imagine wasting time in school teaching things like geometry, history, and science; when the student wants to be playing basketball
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    I don’t know whether this is sarcasm, but for a basketball player a broad general sciences is probably enough. Why foist a year of biology when they have no interest and aptitude for it?
    - cdkmoose 3y ago
      Given the ridiculously small percentage of student basketball players who will ever be paid to play basketball, it would be good idea to study more than that
    - fauxpause_ 3y ago
      Because the basic foundational knowledge of biology is useful to understanding the world you exist in.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  High schoolers seldom know what they want for their future and skipping out on general education is just setting them up for failure when whatever they did try to specialize in, does not work out.
mordae 3y ago
Screw all of that. Just make the education modular, let anyone take any module and any time and certify them based on requirements for that particular module. Regardless of their attendence and other crap. Then once they have requisite modules, issue them the corresponding degree. The whole idiocy of linear education makes me furious. I have only gotten motivated to study certain topics later in my life, where it's effectively impossible to return to college because I would have to study a whole bunch of unrelated crap and get the degree or go home instead of gaining a small portion of it and perhaps finishing the rest later. And let me just take the exams when you have nothing to teach me! I mean, seriously, why would I have to enroll and attend just to get certified for Linux system administration when I make living off it? Just give me the module. Same with software development, databases and so on. Sure, I will take the OCSP / BGP advanced networking classes when I have time for them, but don't force me to study routing now (or you won't have enough credits for this semester and you'll have to go away). Aaaaargh.
- bitL 3y ago
  Some schools are doing stackable degrees. You take a block of a few classes (e.g. 3-4 classes), get a graduate certificate for that area and once you get a few of them, you can convert them to a graduate degree. It might be trickier for undergrad as that's where the grit is being created.
- zabzonk 3y ago
  the uk has had modular degree schemes going back to the 1980s, when i wrote the software to administer one (nomad/2, ibm vm/cms, if anyone is interested). you could do the modules part-time, take a year off etc.
- easton 3y ago
  This is precisely how Western Governor's University (WGU) works, as I understand. You do the modules and when you've completed them (at your own pace), you get the degree. I had a teacher in high school who did this to get a IT degree, and they have lots of other ones as well. HN story where someone got a CS degree in three months by speedrunning the tests: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900
sokoloff 3y ago
I’m in favor of freshman year being “pass/no-record”, meaning you either pass a class and earn credits for it or we keep no record that you took the class. That’s how my university did it (many decades ago) and it did help me adjust without feeling like there was a long shadow being cast.
spicyusername 3y ago
- Eliminate grades K-12 - Eliminate grades in college - Free college for everyone - Keep standardized testing like TCAP to assess *teachers* - More industry standardized testing, like the actuarial P1, the bar exam, ASE certification, or AWS CSA, to facilitate hiring Everyone gets the same opportunity to learn, stress free. Teachers are still tracked to ensure quality. Hiring is still tracking incoming skill level. Nobody has to go to higher education if they already know the material.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  ASE certification requires passing a knowledge test and having work experience. Many other trade certifications/licensing are similar, meaning that it’s a mix of knowledge and putting in the time. https://workexp.ase.com/FormInstr.aspx https://workexp.ase.com/FormInstr.aspx
- cdkmoose 3y ago
  Growth, both educational and occupational, is greatly enhanced by meaningful regularly spaced feedback. Delaying that feedback to the very end of a long process can lower the likelihood of success. We can debate the merits of different models of assessment, but totally skipping assessment robs the participants of useful feedback.
TurkishPoptart 3y ago
Operations to eliminate the concept of American meritocracy are well underway. I just hope the medical schools don't start doing this, too. This is great for underachievers, bad for basically everyone else.
- localplume 3y ago
  yup. this is basically the collective dumbing down of everyone, bringing everyone down to the level of the laziest, least motivation, dumbest people. this is the equality that some people want apparently. all they're doing is widening the gap between the poor and the wealthy, as the latter can afford to push their children to legitimate schools so they can be challenged and learn. its the destruction of class mobility and meritocracy. under the guise of progressivism. what a joke. people whose title is "provost for educational equity and academic success" are such hacks and leeches on the system. if its pass/fail only freshman year, fine. thats usually very basic anyways. but if it spreads to the entire degree then its a problem. I guarantee history will not judge any of these people kindly. the destruction their bullshit will have over decades will be looked upon with disgust as to how we tolerated this dumbing down.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
>help them adapt No, this is a sales tactic to improve customer retention. By lifting restrictions, anxiety, undue pressure, the customer (freshman) is more likely to commit to the product (4-year degree). After the customer has committed for a year, they are less likely to change or drop the brand (the college). Then it's business as usual. Four full years of tuition, less customer churn. They don't care about their students "adapting". They care about lots and lots of money.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  > They care about lots and lots of money. What better lesson could the colleges teach them to prepare them for the business world?
  - bumby 3y ago
    Perhaps ethics, civics, and other topics that have to be balanced against the singular idea that the goal is to maximize profit.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  Not really. This is needlessly cynical. The transition to college is a big one for many students, with a whole lot of "it depends". At a hard school, students are put in a situation where they might have to manage time and learn to study for the first time, and many learn some very hard lessons along that path. MIT has had first years go pass/no record for decades for exactly this reason. And I see the exact same pattern in my undergrads at CMU. (And yes, we really do care about our students adapting, at least at the faculty level. We're educators, for crying out loud. You don't think we take the industry pay cut because we feel guilty about earning money, do you?)
- bumby 3y ago
  >No, this is a sales tactic to improve customer retention. This is one of Jonathan Haidt’s points about what has led to many of the problems at universities. When the “students” are treated as “customers” it causes universities to work against their stated missions in order to placate their customer base.
shanusmagnus 3y ago
I don't understand how this topic can be discussed at all without foregrounding the question of what higher education is for, in terms of how it is used and what are the social consequences of having a degree. Some amount of that is learning the material, some amount is socialization, some amount is proving that you could go through a certain process to a certain standard. Going no-grade will have uneven effects on these outcomes, particularly the first and last. Without being explicit about what's going on, arguing about whether any particular change is good or bad is kind of pointless.
manchego 3y ago
I'm currently studying at the Technical University of Munich, and I quite like the grading system. Most or all of the grade is the final exam. If you fail an exam it doesn't go on your record, and you can retake it. If you pass, the grade goes on your record, and cannot be retaken. The thing I particularly like is that you don't have to decide if you want to take an exam until after you've completed most of the class (and even if you sign up for the exam, you can just not attend, thus not getting a grade).
prepend 3y ago
Why don’t they just eliminate attendance as well and just have students pay $100k for the degree directly and the students can sign a pledge promising they learned all the material? Pass/Fail already exists as an option if students want to use that. Grades aren’t about proving learning, they are a demonstration of competence. I took many classes with prerequisites that required a C or even B in other classes before allowing me to take it. This was because of demand for classes as well as out of necessity of prior knowledge. It was possible to get a waiver from the professor, and some did. But many wouldn’t even meet because they were too busy to meet individually and assess a student’s knowledge. How will this work without grades? It seems like this is just opting for short term happiness and pushing the actual reasons for grades down the road.
- nine_k 3y ago
  I think instruction and examination could and should be split. Independent assessors could accept anyone, much like you can take a foreign language proficiency test now, or a driver license test. Some common standards will be adopted, or emerge where absent. Certain kind of examination will take pretty long to be comparable with what a university can assess. A course project, one that demonstrates some breadth and depth of knowledge of the course's material, may take weeks or months to complete. Which, on the other hand, should be fine, both in a traditional university setting, and outside it.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    This is actually how independent study worked at the university I went to. You got a big stack of material to learn. There were designated study group times with a room provided, but that was if you wanted to show up and discuss with other students. At the end of the semester some guy showed up and gave you an oral exam followed by a written exam. They were usually a professor at another nearby university that actually offered the course. If you passed both you got a passing grade for the course.
- musicale 3y ago
  Neither assessment nor feedback require letter grades. Some schools without grades use a portfolio system where you have to complete projects in various areas and some sort of capstone project or thesis to graduate. Graduate programs largely work that way as well. They may have a qualifying process, but actual letter grades are largely irrelevant. Students still get feedback on their projects, and they graduate with a CV and work portfolio that they can show to employers or graduate programs.
0xbadc0de5 3y ago
Coming soon: The engineers who design the airplanes you're flying in, or the bridges you're driving across, or the airbags in the car you're driving... all graduating from universities who do not evaluate students on their ability to perform a task correctly and proficiently, working for companies who give them glowing performance reviews because it makes them feel good regardless of their competence. Future doctors, lawyers, historians, politicians, all raised with no objective standards of quality and performance. Idiocracy was a documentary.
wernercd 3y ago
Why not just cut the middle man? Just pay $100k for a 4 year degree. No need for grades, learning or any of the crap that "discriminates" between smart and um... not smart... students.
machina_ex_deus 3y ago
That's as an absurd notion as saying that getting rid of money will solve wealth inequality. Weird Communist logic where when the world shows you people aren't equal, instead of accepting it, you claim the world is wrong. Too much stress might be bad, but there's an optimal level of stress and it is definitely not zero. Software that doesn't get tested will be full of bugs, students that don't get tested will misunderstand the material. People need reward function. They need clear motivation. If they don't have money / grades / other goals, very few will be internally motivated enough to do things out of sheer will. Just like communism doesn't work because people need to see the carrot in front of their face to be motivated. By the way, in actually communist countries, their education was even more stressful and competitive. If you decide to not use carrots, you're very likely to find yourself using sticks.
- prepend 3y ago
  There’s also an incentive issue of whether students will actually work and learn if there are no grades. I struggle with raising children. Post-Covid the grading system is really weird with lots of things not being graded or allowing infinite retakes. My kids frequently say “I’m not doing that, it isn’t graded.” Even though it’s practice or homework for grades things. If the entire freshman year isn’t graded, will students choose to do assignments? Will they actually learn and be ready for future study? How will they self-assess? This seems like a nice idea that will incentivize not learning and instead lead students to prioritize many other things that are interesting freshman year.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    >My kids frequently say “I’m not doing that, it isn’t graded.” Even though it’s practice or homework for grades things. To be fair, depending on how old your kids are, that isn't too bad. Knowing when to take a break/prioritize and skip an assignment is also a skill. Even pre-covid, it was common at my uni for classes to allow 2-3 skipped assignments per semester with no penalty. Used to be really convenient when needing to focus on something else, like an exam/project for another class. It was a much more healthier learning arrangement than in highschool where it was normal to get assigned a bunch of homework from all classes simulateneously with no real flexibility.
ilc 3y ago
MIT's had pass / no-record for Freshman for some time now. WPI has had similar things to the point where getting Fs wiped off your record can result in what was called "snowflaking" or a blank transcript for a term... RPI uses whole letter grades. A/B/C/D/F. Those are the only valid grades. A high GPA was far from guaranteed, because A- to B+ is a big shift. Overall, I think Pass/No Record is good. I think it results in less stressed out Freshman especially at elite schools, where some of them will get their first B or C, later on. They need to understand as a friend so eloquently put it: At MIT, you take all the kids who sit in the front of the class, and put them together. Guess what... at MIT there will be a kid at the front of THAT class. (And likely... it isn't you.) People need time to adjust their world view, or suicide rates, etc.. aren't pretty, they aren't great as IS. Many of us know someone who took their own lives, or just left after falling apart.
- musicale 3y ago
  Depression and suicide (unsurprisingly the second most common cause of death after accidental injuries such as car crashes) are serious problems among college students. I expect that inflexible and punitive grading and/or academic policies don't help. It's heartbreaking to hear of a student dying from suicide. These are young people with amazing potential. And they're our fellow humans.
keiferski 3y ago
Are there any universities going in the opposite direction, deliberately maintaining a sense of rigor? The only one I can think of is St. John’s College, which requires reading a ton of classics in their original languages.
daniel-thompson 3y ago
When I was in high school I could ace most of it without studying at all. I thought it was great at the time, but the shitty part - only apparent later - was that I failed to develop good study habits. When I started at university in a technical major, it was a real kick in the teeth. The material was substantially more difficult, but the hardest part for me - and the biggest piece of learning - was the realization that I had to study consistently and be purposeful about managing my time in a way I never really had to before I got there. My grades freshman year were abysmal. But they also helped me internalize that I needed to buckle down and put in the work. I'm glad that that happened in a relatively forgiving environment like school, instead of in the workplace.
drewcoo 3y ago
> The hardest part about being a new college student, Malak said, "is not the coursework. It's learning how to be an adult." Maybe there should be courses in "adulting." Then again, this is about non-tech schools, isn't it? Probably too practical.
FridayoLeary 3y ago
At the end of the day it's a movement to get rid of objective standards of education. While the article points out good reasons why grading is flawed, it completely fails to take in to account how bad the alternative is. Evaluating achievement based on subjective considerations, means that actual levels of knowledge is no longer important. This is objectively absurd for numerous reasons. Most tellingly is that, from what in can see, mathematics is a particular target for those calling for educational reform. In fact the sources quoted in the article disregard the imparting of knowledge to students as the primary goal of university. Rather they say it's to foster learning. While this is a nice ideal to have, it's simply not true. So what's really going on? While the article uses carefully couched phrases, reading between the lines i think the actual motivation is the drive towards "equality". These misguided social reformers are responding to a disparity in educational outcome, not by improving the quality of the education, but by manipulating the results so that everyone is now "equal".
stcroixx 3y ago
Ok, so employers won’t hire from these colleges then. This is only going to benefit wealthy kids who have the luxury of paying for a degree that won’t enable them get a job.
LatteLazy 3y ago
I mean, if you are giving marks for attendance you've already lost...
testHNac 3y ago
So how does this effect the employability of students from these Colleges ? I am assuming here that a combination of College, Degree and Grades determine the student's job prospects. Now an employer might value students from a particular college less as they don't have grades. Of course, everything comes down to student's actual capabilities. But then why should a Degree from a college be required for a job when grades aren't necessary. One could simply do courses for a lot of professions, learn on their own and apply to a job. May be after some professional certification that's not tied to a degree. Note - Not applicable to things like Medicine or Engineering, but can be to may other professions.
- musicale 3y ago
  If you graduate from an art or design school your portfolio is probably more important than your grades. I imagine a Ph.D. graduate's thesis and publications are quite a bit more important than grades.
JohnClark1337 3y ago
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musicale 3y ago
The portfolio system seems like it would work well for any practical major such as engineering. Grades are already largely irrelevant in many graduate programs with a thesis requirement.

A degree from a university that has gotten rid of grades will not be worth much compared to one that hasn't. > If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A, "they didn't learn anything," said Greene. And "if the student came in and struggled to get a C-plus, they may have learned a lot." Sorry, Jody Greene, you're out to lunch here. The grade is assigned by the lecturer of a course, as a confirmation that the student knows a thing or two about certain fixed topics. If the student learned about those topics somewhere else before taking the course, they earned that A just as much as someone who learned it in the course. It is extremely important to intellectual freedom that the time and place where some knowledge or skills were attained is considered immaterial. The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent. I dare say, an attack on Western civilization's intellectual legacy. > And so if we were to shift our focus on to learning and away from grades, we would be able to tell whether we were graduating people with the skills that we say we're graduating them with." To "tell whether you are graduating people with skills", you need a test of those skills. That's a grade. A skill test could actually be a lot harder than earning grades in some disciplines. For instance, if we expect that computer science graduates ought to be skilled software developers and start testing that, it will be a shitshow.

deleted 3y ago
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zamnos 3y ago
Depends if that university is MIT or Harvard, or somewhere else. But also, you know what they call the dude who got C's at medical school? Doctor.
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wanttocomment 3y ago
I would guess 80% of the career value is captured by satisfying admissions and graduating. I think the actual grading isn't looked at except to rank similar peers for admission to other competitive programs.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  This is exactly why companies should drop degree requirements. If 80% of the degree requirements are met when you graduate from HS (and I would say it's more than 80%), then why make them wait 4 years and take on a pile of debt?
  - bumby 3y ago
    OP didn’t specifically saying graduating high school. I read the post as graduating college was part of that 80%
Mezzie 3y ago
> If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A, "they didn't learn anything," said Greene Also, the fuck they didn't. They learned patience (have to listen to/discuss other people's questions even if they're stupid to you) and the ability to do tasks that are boring/tedious/something you've already done before - 2 qualities that are excellent to have when working. If you're used to picking things up quickly, learning to handle boring and tedious environments is probably the best skill you could take out of your schooling. How many meetings have we all sat in where we just have to sit there until somebody important reaches the conclusion we reached in 10 minutes?
- mordae 3y ago
  Not working. Being employed. There is a difference.
  - Mezzie 3y ago
    Good clarification, thanks!
- sieongioetnio 3y ago
  That could be learned working the checkout line at a grocery store. I think universities can aim a little higher.
  - Mezzie 3y ago
    The average kid who is that bright or in that situation is not being asked to work a check-out line. We recognize that it isn't an efficient use of their talent. That kid is doing side projects or taking internships. They have to pick up some patience somewhere.
fallingknife 3y ago
Was already worthless when they dropped standardized test requirements for admission.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
In western countries, the basis of understanding and discourse is transitioning from reason to feelings.
dalbasal 3y ago
>The grade is assigned by the lecturer of a course, as a confirmation that the student knows a thing or two about certain fixed topics. That's an idea of what grades are and what they're for. It's not the idea. I would call this an ideal, often fallen short of, and often misguided. In practice, grades are used in all sorts of ways for all sort of reasons. Many times, they are used for no good reason. The idea that tests are impartial accreditation is abstract. It rarely plays in reality. There's a place for GMEDs, bar exams, TOEFLS and whatnot... but it's limited. >It is extremely important to intellectual freedom that the time and place where some knowledge or skills were attained is considered immaterial. > The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent It's abhorrent only within the accreditation framework of ideals. This just isn't reality. That objectivity ideal for education is always betrayed because it doesn't work. People don't value exam results, in their own right, because they're not that valuable in their own right. A course's job irl is to educate, not accredit.
- bumby 3y ago
  >A course's job irl is to educate, not accredit But a course is part of a larger system which is built on accreditation. Universities no longer have a monopoly on information/education so accreditation is really the main value they hold. Erode that and there’s not much vocational reason to go to college (we could argue about the role of higher education, but it’s been more vocationally focused than civically focused going back to the Morrill act in the mid 1800s)
  - dalbasal 3y ago
    >Universities no longer have a monopoly on information/education so accreditation is really the main value they hold. Erode that and there’s not much vocational reason to go to college. Again, I think this is idealistic thinking... and doesn't have much to do with universities irl. Whether or not an MIT degree is an accreditation, it is not an objective, grades based accreditation. It never was. There has never been a world where your bar exam results matter, and no one cares about where you went to law school. An MIT degree does not mean "passed the MIT exams." Universities never really had monopoly over knowledge. Every university teaches the same accounting courses. They're also online. There is even a well respected 3rd party accreditation. People still care about where they, their employees or their accountants were educated. We can debate why this is the case. We can't ignore that it is the case. The university matters, almost always, to the people involved... Accreditation matters sometimes, but usually only as a minimum bar. Neither education nor accreditation guarantee ability.
prepend 3y ago
This seems funny to me as well as the point of learning isn’t the actual learning, it’s the knowledge gained. That’s why we learn. Yes the journey is valuable but the purpose of classes isn’t to measure learningness as a process, but to measure the knowledge and skills gained. If someone already knew material and learned nothing and got an A, it means they have knowledge of that topic and now there’s a little more signal of that knowledge. It doesn’t matter that they went from 90% knowledge to 95%. If someone got a C+ and went from 0-78% knowledge they learned much but still can’t demonstrate much knowledge. If we wanted a course on learning processes specifically, then create one. But thinking that the point of grades is measuring how much was learned seems so backwards. It’s good to recognize effort, but the point of effort is to achieve an outcome, not the outcome itself. “Prepend is so great, ve works so hard. Totally sucks and is stupid but works so hard.” Is silly if used for ability to do a particular thing, but useful in measuring grit and discipline or whatever.
sidewndr46 3y ago
Greene's take on education is very odd. Should I be considered not to have a CS degree because I did not need to learn anything to pass the classes? I would often leave myself a gap of 1 hour between project deadlines and when I would start on them, because I knew I needed 30 minutes to 45 minutes to complete them. I'd spend the remaining 15 minutes before class correcting the errors in the assignment and submitting those to the instructor as proposed revisions. I had a high school professor that just gave us the university's Chemistry introduction series (200 level, if that matters) as our high school curriculum. I didn't learn much in those classes at university, mostly because I had already completed the work.
sieongioetnio 3y ago
> A degree from a university that has gotten rid of grades will not be worth much compared to one that hasn't. You may be surprised to learn that quite a few well-regarded universities adopted this sort of policy years ago. In particular, grading freshmen pass/fail is not uncommon. >The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent. Whoa, Nelly! No one is talking about refusing degrees to students who read too much. I don't know where you got that idea. It definitely wasn't from Jody Greene. Right now, attending university is both an education and a credential. These two goals are in tension, and both are compromised as a result. Students should be able to pursue an education without fear that trying something challenging will permanently affect their career. Employers looking for proof of knowledge shouldn't care where or how that knowledge was learned. >To "tell whether you are graduating people with skills", you need a test of those skills. Right. >That's a grade. Wrong. Traditional letter grades are one way of measuring mastery, but the interviewees in this article describe a few alternatives. Sadly they don't describe these alternatives in detail. I wish this article were a bit more nuts-and-bolts. It leaves more questions than it answers.

dekhn 3y ago

I went to UCSC, which at the time was known for not having grades. Instead, teachers wrote "narrative evaluations" which were slightly more personalized and detailed. In most science classes, the evals were generated programmatically based on your test scores. When applying to grad school, I had to provide a GPA so I made an estimate (which I clearly stated was an estimate) and gave myself a 3.5. I believe UCSC has moved towards having more conventional grades. But, for me, not having grades was really nice. I hated the whole race to get high scores. But I don't think narrative evals really make much sense in classes with 100+ students.

deleted 3y ago
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asah 3y ago
I can imagine LLMs providing much richer evals...
Balgair 3y ago
Fellow Slug here. They had grades by the time I went there and I used them for grad school applications. But, they still have the narrative evals (Please be right!). My evals were critical for my grad school applications. All the PIs that I talked with said that they reviewed mine, mostly because it was so unique to have a 50+ page transcript. Their reviewing of my evals was what got me into a few places. Personally, I treasure those evals. Some were pretty bland and report-y, but enough are good descriptions of myself at a young age from otherwise unbiased observers. Those deeper and longer evals are fantastic and really helped me grow as a young person. Taking them seriously and chewing through them allowed me to choose the right major and the right path, for me, at the time. Likely, they're gone by now, subsumed into the grind of academia. But I hope they aren't. They were really special and really helpful.
- dekhn 3y ago
  I don't think my grad program read my narrative evals. Their process is to basically make a stack of applicants and anybody with a GPA lower than 3.5 or so is rejected without any further inspection. An application without a GPA would also be rejected immediately. Fortunately, my conversion table ("Excellent = 4.0, Very Good = 3.5") made the cutoff!

roody15 3y ago

“ Grades are not a representation of student learning, as hard as it is for us to break the mindset that if the student got an A it means they learned," This is a faulty premise. The point of grades is not to reflect growth or improvement. Instead grades are meant to represent mastery of a certain topic / subject.

anonuser123456 3y ago
It’s an expected perspective from someone steeped in the humanities as there is no objective ground truth in the subject.

helen___keller 3y ago

Silly as this sounds, if it’s just freshman year, that would mean that your graduating GPA is weighted more heavily towards non-intro classes, which i view as a plus overall. My chops as a computer science graduate was about my mastery of algorithms, compilers, and automata when I was 22, not of discrete math when I was 18.

flappyeagle 3y ago
Yeah the intro classes were the worst grades for me. Subjects less interesting, grading more random
lfmunoz4 3y ago
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nobodyandproud 3y ago

Keep the grades, but build on each student’s strengths? We waste a lot of time during middle school and high school grooming them for liberal arts prep. Instead, high school is when kids should be allowed to narrow down, cultivate, and build their foundational skills of interest. Sports? Technical? Arts? Then in the final years allow them to branch if they wish but also to demonstrate and show how much they don’t know. Instead, every high school has turned into liberal arts college prep; then we do it again for bachelors. Waste of time classes for me: Spanish 2/3, English and composition, general sciences (the broad one that covers all sciences in one course)

fauxpause_ 3y ago
Imagine wasting time in school teaching things like geometry, history, and science; when the student wants to be playing basketball
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  I don’t know whether this is sarcasm, but for a basketball player a broad general sciences is probably enough. Why foist a year of biology when they have no interest and aptitude for it?
  - cdkmoose 3y ago
    Given the ridiculously small percentage of student basketball players who will ever be paid to play basketball, it would be good idea to study more than that
  - fauxpause_ 3y ago
    Because the basic foundational knowledge of biology is useful to understanding the world you exist in.
dotnet00 3y ago
High schoolers seldom know what they want for their future and skipping out on general education is just setting them up for failure when whatever they did try to specialize in, does not work out.

mordae 3y ago

Screw all of that. Just make the education modular, let anyone take any module and any time and certify them based on requirements for that particular module. Regardless of their attendence and other crap. Then once they have requisite modules, issue them the corresponding degree. The whole idiocy of linear education makes me furious. I have only gotten motivated to study certain topics later in my life, where it's effectively impossible to return to college because I would have to study a whole bunch of unrelated crap and get the degree or go home instead of gaining a small portion of it and perhaps finishing the rest later. And let me just take the exams when you have nothing to teach me! I mean, seriously, why would I have to enroll and attend just to get certified for Linux system administration when I make living off it? Just give me the module. Same with software development, databases and so on. Sure, I will take the OCSP / BGP advanced networking classes when I have time for them, but don't force me to study routing now (or you won't have enough credits for this semester and you'll have to go away). Aaaaargh.

bitL 3y ago
Some schools are doing stackable degrees. You take a block of a few classes (e.g. 3-4 classes), get a graduate certificate for that area and once you get a few of them, you can convert them to a graduate degree. It might be trickier for undergrad as that's where the grit is being created.
zabzonk 3y ago
the uk has had modular degree schemes going back to the 1980s, when i wrote the software to administer one (nomad/2, ibm vm/cms, if anyone is interested). you could do the modules part-time, take a year off etc.
easton 3y ago
This is precisely how Western Governor's University (WGU) works, as I understand. You do the modules and when you've completed them (at your own pace), you get the degree. I had a teacher in high school who did this to get a IT degree, and they have lots of other ones as well. HN story where someone got a CS degree in three months by speedrunning the tests: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900

sokoloff 3y ago

I’m in favor of freshman year being “pass/no-record”, meaning you either pass a class and earn credits for it or we keep no record that you took the class. That’s how my university did it (many decades ago) and it did help me adjust without feeling like there was a long shadow being cast.

spicyusername 3y ago

- Eliminate grades K-12 - Eliminate grades in college - Free college for everyone - Keep standardized testing like TCAP to assess *teachers* - More industry standardized testing, like the actuarial P1, the bar exam, ASE certification, or AWS CSA, to facilitate hiring Everyone gets the same opportunity to learn, stress free. Teachers are still tracked to ensure quality. Hiring is still tracking incoming skill level. Nobody has to go to higher education if they already know the material.

sokoloff 3y ago
ASE certification requires passing a knowledge test and having work experience. Many other trade certifications/licensing are similar, meaning that it’s a mix of knowledge and putting in the time. https://workexp.ase.com/FormInstr.aspx https://workexp.ase.com/FormInstr.aspx
cdkmoose 3y ago
Growth, both educational and occupational, is greatly enhanced by meaningful regularly spaced feedback. Delaying that feedback to the very end of a long process can lower the likelihood of success. We can debate the merits of different models of assessment, but totally skipping assessment robs the participants of useful feedback.

TurkishPoptart 3y ago

Operations to eliminate the concept of American meritocracy are well underway. I just hope the medical schools don't start doing this, too. This is great for underachievers, bad for basically everyone else.

localplume 3y ago
yup. this is basically the collective dumbing down of everyone, bringing everyone down to the level of the laziest, least motivation, dumbest people. this is the equality that some people want apparently. all they're doing is widening the gap between the poor and the wealthy, as the latter can afford to push their children to legitimate schools so they can be challenged and learn. its the destruction of class mobility and meritocracy. under the guise of progressivism. what a joke. people whose title is "provost for educational equity and academic success" are such hacks and leeches on the system. if its pass/fail only freshman year, fine. thats usually very basic anyways. but if it spreads to the entire degree then its a problem. I guarantee history will not judge any of these people kindly. the destruction their bullshit will have over decades will be looked upon with disgust as to how we tolerated this dumbing down.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

>help them adapt No, this is a sales tactic to improve customer retention. By lifting restrictions, anxiety, undue pressure, the customer (freshman) is more likely to commit to the product (4-year degree). After the customer has committed for a year, they are less likely to change or drop the brand (the college). Then it's business as usual. Four full years of tuition, less customer churn. They don't care about their students "adapting". They care about lots and lots of money.

hotpotamus 3y ago
> They care about lots and lots of money. What better lesson could the colleges teach them to prepare them for the business world?
- bumby 3y ago
  Perhaps ethics, civics, and other topics that have to be balanced against the singular idea that the goal is to maximize profit.
dgacmu 3y ago
Not really. This is needlessly cynical. The transition to college is a big one for many students, with a whole lot of "it depends". At a hard school, students are put in a situation where they might have to manage time and learn to study for the first time, and many learn some very hard lessons along that path. MIT has had first years go pass/no record for decades for exactly this reason. And I see the exact same pattern in my undergrads at CMU. (And yes, we really do care about our students adapting, at least at the faculty level. We're educators, for crying out loud. You don't think we take the industry pay cut because we feel guilty about earning money, do you?)
bumby 3y ago
>No, this is a sales tactic to improve customer retention. This is one of Jonathan Haidt’s points about what has led to many of the problems at universities. When the “students” are treated as “customers” it causes universities to work against their stated missions in order to placate their customer base.

shanusmagnus 3y ago

I don't understand how this topic can be discussed at all without foregrounding the question of what higher education is for, in terms of how it is used and what are the social consequences of having a degree. Some amount of that is learning the material, some amount is socialization, some amount is proving that you could go through a certain process to a certain standard. Going no-grade will have uneven effects on these outcomes, particularly the first and last. Without being explicit about what's going on, arguing about whether any particular change is good or bad is kind of pointless.

manchego 3y ago

I'm currently studying at the Technical University of Munich, and I quite like the grading system. Most or all of the grade is the final exam. If you fail an exam it doesn't go on your record, and you can retake it. If you pass, the grade goes on your record, and cannot be retaken. The thing I particularly like is that you don't have to decide if you want to take an exam until after you've completed most of the class (and even if you sign up for the exam, you can just not attend, thus not getting a grade).

prepend 3y ago

Why don’t they just eliminate attendance as well and just have students pay $100k for the degree directly and the students can sign a pledge promising they learned all the material? Pass/Fail already exists as an option if students want to use that. Grades aren’t about proving learning, they are a demonstration of competence. I took many classes with prerequisites that required a C or even B in other classes before allowing me to take it. This was because of demand for classes as well as out of necessity of prior knowledge. It was possible to get a waiver from the professor, and some did. But many wouldn’t even meet because they were too busy to meet individually and assess a student’s knowledge. How will this work without grades? It seems like this is just opting for short term happiness and pushing the actual reasons for grades down the road.

nine_k 3y ago
I think instruction and examination could and should be split. Independent assessors could accept anyone, much like you can take a foreign language proficiency test now, or a driver license test. Some common standards will be adopted, or emerge where absent. Certain kind of examination will take pretty long to be comparable with what a university can assess. A course project, one that demonstrates some breadth and depth of knowledge of the course's material, may take weeks or months to complete. Which, on the other hand, should be fine, both in a traditional university setting, and outside it.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  This is actually how independent study worked at the university I went to. You got a big stack of material to learn. There were designated study group times with a room provided, but that was if you wanted to show up and discuss with other students. At the end of the semester some guy showed up and gave you an oral exam followed by a written exam. They were usually a professor at another nearby university that actually offered the course. If you passed both you got a passing grade for the course.
musicale 3y ago
Neither assessment nor feedback require letter grades. Some schools without grades use a portfolio system where you have to complete projects in various areas and some sort of capstone project or thesis to graduate. Graduate programs largely work that way as well. They may have a qualifying process, but actual letter grades are largely irrelevant. Students still get feedback on their projects, and they graduate with a CV and work portfolio that they can show to employers or graduate programs.

0xbadc0de5 3y ago

Coming soon: The engineers who design the airplanes you're flying in, or the bridges you're driving across, or the airbags in the car you're driving... all graduating from universities who do not evaluate students on their ability to perform a task correctly and proficiently, working for companies who give them glowing performance reviews because it makes them feel good regardless of their competence. Future doctors, lawyers, historians, politicians, all raised with no objective standards of quality and performance. Idiocracy was a documentary.

wernercd 3y ago

Why not just cut the middle man? Just pay $100k for a 4 year degree. No need for grades, learning or any of the crap that "discriminates" between smart and um... not smart... students.

machina_ex_deus 3y ago

That's as an absurd notion as saying that getting rid of money will solve wealth inequality. Weird Communist logic where when the world shows you people aren't equal, instead of accepting it, you claim the world is wrong. Too much stress might be bad, but there's an optimal level of stress and it is definitely not zero. Software that doesn't get tested will be full of bugs, students that don't get tested will misunderstand the material. People need reward function. They need clear motivation. If they don't have money / grades / other goals, very few will be internally motivated enough to do things out of sheer will. Just like communism doesn't work because people need to see the carrot in front of their face to be motivated. By the way, in actually communist countries, their education was even more stressful and competitive. If you decide to not use carrots, you're very likely to find yourself using sticks.

prepend 3y ago
There’s also an incentive issue of whether students will actually work and learn if there are no grades. I struggle with raising children. Post-Covid the grading system is really weird with lots of things not being graded or allowing infinite retakes. My kids frequently say “I’m not doing that, it isn’t graded.” Even though it’s practice or homework for grades things. If the entire freshman year isn’t graded, will students choose to do assignments? Will they actually learn and be ready for future study? How will they self-assess? This seems like a nice idea that will incentivize not learning and instead lead students to prioritize many other things that are interesting freshman year.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  >My kids frequently say “I’m not doing that, it isn’t graded.” Even though it’s practice or homework for grades things. To be fair, depending on how old your kids are, that isn't too bad. Knowing when to take a break/prioritize and skip an assignment is also a skill. Even pre-covid, it was common at my uni for classes to allow 2-3 skipped assignments per semester with no penalty. Used to be really convenient when needing to focus on something else, like an exam/project for another class. It was a much more healthier learning arrangement than in highschool where it was normal to get assigned a bunch of homework from all classes simulateneously with no real flexibility.

ilc 3y ago

MIT's had pass / no-record for Freshman for some time now. WPI has had similar things to the point where getting Fs wiped off your record can result in what was called "snowflaking" or a blank transcript for a term... RPI uses whole letter grades. A/B/C/D/F. Those are the only valid grades. A high GPA was far from guaranteed, because A- to B+ is a big shift. Overall, I think Pass/No Record is good. I think it results in less stressed out Freshman especially at elite schools, where some of them will get their first B or C, later on. They need to understand as a friend so eloquently put it: At MIT, you take all the kids who sit in the front of the class, and put them together. Guess what... at MIT there will be a kid at the front of THAT class. (And likely... it isn't you.) People need time to adjust their world view, or suicide rates, etc.. aren't pretty, they aren't great as IS. Many of us know someone who took their own lives, or just left after falling apart.

musicale 3y ago
Depression and suicide (unsurprisingly the second most common cause of death after accidental injuries such as car crashes) are serious problems among college students. I expect that inflexible and punitive grading and/or academic policies don't help. It's heartbreaking to hear of a student dying from suicide. These are young people with amazing potential. And they're our fellow humans.

keiferski 3y ago

Are there any universities going in the opposite direction, deliberately maintaining a sense of rigor? The only one I can think of is St. John’s College, which requires reading a ton of classics in their original languages.

daniel-thompson 3y ago

When I was in high school I could ace most of it without studying at all. I thought it was great at the time, but the shitty part - only apparent later - was that I failed to develop good study habits. When I started at university in a technical major, it was a real kick in the teeth. The material was substantially more difficult, but the hardest part for me - and the biggest piece of learning - was the realization that I had to study consistently and be purposeful about managing my time in a way I never really had to before I got there. My grades freshman year were abysmal. But they also helped me internalize that I needed to buckle down and put in the work. I'm glad that that happened in a relatively forgiving environment like school, instead of in the workplace.

drewcoo 3y ago

> The hardest part about being a new college student, Malak said, "is not the coursework. It's learning how to be an adult." Maybe there should be courses in "adulting." Then again, this is about non-tech schools, isn't it? Probably too practical.

FridayoLeary 3y ago

At the end of the day it's a movement to get rid of objective standards of education. While the article points out good reasons why grading is flawed, it completely fails to take in to account how bad the alternative is. Evaluating achievement based on subjective considerations, means that actual levels of knowledge is no longer important. This is objectively absurd for numerous reasons. Most tellingly is that, from what in can see, mathematics is a particular target for those calling for educational reform. In fact the sources quoted in the article disregard the imparting of knowledge to students as the primary goal of university. Rather they say it's to foster learning. While this is a nice ideal to have, it's simply not true. So what's really going on? While the article uses carefully couched phrases, reading between the lines i think the actual motivation is the drive towards "equality". These misguided social reformers are responding to a disparity in educational outcome, not by improving the quality of the education, but by manipulating the results so that everyone is now "equal".

stcroixx 3y ago

Ok, so employers won’t hire from these colleges then. This is only going to benefit wealthy kids who have the luxury of paying for a degree that won’t enable them get a job.

LatteLazy 3y ago

I mean, if you are giving marks for attendance you've already lost...

testHNac 3y ago

So how does this effect the employability of students from these Colleges ? I am assuming here that a combination of College, Degree and Grades determine the student's job prospects. Now an employer might value students from a particular college less as they don't have grades. Of course, everything comes down to student's actual capabilities. But then why should a Degree from a college be required for a job when grades aren't necessary. One could simply do courses for a lot of professions, learn on their own and apply to a job. May be after some professional certification that's not tied to a degree. Note - Not applicable to things like Medicine or Engineering, but can be to may other professions.

musicale 3y ago
If you graduate from an art or design school your portfolio is probably more important than your grades. I imagine a Ph.D. graduate's thesis and publications are quite a bit more important than grades.

JohnClark1337 3y ago

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musicale 3y ago

The portfolio system seems like it would work well for any practical major such as engineering. Grades are already largely irrelevant in many graduate programs with a thesis requirement.