Gradness Madness: For the love of learning

champagnecandy:

bronze-by-gold:

gradnessmadness:

Should universities eliminate letter grades, and switch to a pass/fail system? Ask your undergrads this question, and you’ll hear some fascinating discussion. What a great idea! - they’ll say. That would sure eliminate the pressure of constantly worrying about scores and GPAs, and would allow us to really learn for the sake of learning.

After they’ve had a few minutes to talk about it, though, the discussion will take this turn:

But wait! If we went to a pass/fail system, how would we really know how we’re doing? How would we know how we compare to our peers? And if we didn’t get a letter grade, what would our transcripts look like? How would employers, or grad schools, be able to evaluate us, if all they knew was that we passed the class? The discussion usually concludes with: it’s a great idea in theory, but wouldn’t work in practice. ….

Actually, there are established alternatives to a letter-grade system which give you more information about how well you’re doing than a GPA ever could. I did my undergrad at The Evergreen State College which has always used narrative evaluations in place of letter grades. The last week of every term is designated as “evaluation week”. You have a brief meeting with your professor in which you are given a one-page written evaluation of your performance and you turn in your own self-evaluations. Both evaluations go into your transcript, along with a description of the program (at Evergreen, you also take a single full-time, interdisciplinary program each term). If you haven’t done the required amount of work, you might lose all or some of the credits for the course.

Generally speaking, if you want to know how well you’re doing compared to your peers, you can tell—but part of the idea of these evaluations is to move away from a competitive model and to enable cooperation. It’s hard to collaborate with someone you’re trying to be better than.

My transcript looks a little like a novel, but it hasn’t been a problem for getting into grad school. As for employers, I had understood that most really don’t care about GPAs and transcripts? I’ve only had to provide transcripts to employers for visa purposes to prove I have a degree.

Seriously: Employers are going to ask for references, not transcripts.