Ya, that's my difficulty with the article. If all the students learned the material, then what is the problem? OTOH, if they just didn't grasp information, or d

Ya, that's my difficulty with the article. If all the students learned the material, then what is the problem? OTOH, if they just didn't grasp information, or didn't try, they deserve something other than an A. There is no easy answer, and it varies by course. In an algorithms course you are going to learn trees, sorting, graphs, and complexity analysis. If you master those, why not an A? Sure, you can make the course insanely hard, and force the students to do essentially original research to get an A, but what is the point there, exactly? You end up with a pressure-cooker, swamped with work school just to create a bell curve. I spent so much of my University time on my own research ideas, helping professors, and so on - course work was almost a back drop. I think I got so much more out of it doing it that way. A competitive fight of churning out massive amounts of work against other straight-A's in high school type-A personalities? Not so valuable (IMO). Time to think, dream, and experiment is what is valuable, and how do you put a grade on that? edit: I take this back somewhat. In some fields it definitely pays off to have a broader foundation. I took quite a few math classes, but would have profited by by even more. Lots of research papers are tough going because I don't have all the math. So there is value in volume of work, too.