3 ms·

Having put two kids through college now: this makes sense. First semester grades are a shitshow anyways, and aren't especially predictive. The first semester at

• alistairSH 3mo ago
  Maybe. Maybe not. In my case, that first semester of near-failing grades was the kick in the pants I needed to start exerting myself. I entered college assuming it was just as easy as high school. It wasn't. Not even close. And a semester of pass/fail wouldn't have taught me that lesson because I did pass, just barely.
  • tptacek 3mo ago
    So issue the grades but don't record them in the GPA.
    • red-iron-pine 3mo ago
      teacher tells you you scored a C+, GPA record just says Pass or Fail
    • doc_ick 2mo ago
      Or maybe that’s the wake up call kids need, without the penalty where would the learning experience be?
      • cindyllm 2mo ago
        [dead]
• hgoel 3mo ago
  I was initially thinking they were being too coddling, but you're right, my first semester grades weren't all that good either. I was working hard, but it takes a lot to adapt to the much higher expectations of a decent uni. They aren't a meaningful signal for how capable a person is by the end of the program. But maybe the fix would be to not count them towards the GPA/permanent transcript, while still providing the achieved grade to the students so they have a measure of how they did.
• s1artibartfast 3mo ago
  Do you see this as a self management issue or a course intensity issue. My anecdotal experience with the University of California system was that course load was a step down from Highschool university prep (which wasn't that bad). Classes were easier than their AP counterparts, and most students who struggled had an issue with attending morning classes after late nights socializing. My impression from family going through this process now is that the high school prep has only gotten more intense, so what is the gap? Has college gotten significantly harder in the last 20 years? Which did you find to be the case?
  • Loughla 3mo ago
    I've worked in colleges for 2 decades. It's rarely purely academic issues that cause bad grades, in my experience. It's everything else with self regulation. Where most college prep goes wrong is at home, in not allowing appropriate agency for the child to make decisions before college. When you go from having to ask to go to the bathroom to being entirely independent in 2 months, bad shit happens. This lesson has held true everywhere I've worked, from small junior colleges to D1 state schools. Subsequently, college has gotten harder, but so has k-12, so proportionately, no it's not more difficult now