I had much the opposite experience with no grades in college. I started at UC Santa Cruz in 1997, and we were the last class for which grades were optional. I had attended an academic high school with a lot of ambitious students who were prone to be very competitive about grades, so this greatly appealed to me.
Once at UCSC, I found the narrative evaluations to be better than grades - instead of a single letter, the evaluation would explain exactly how you performed in the class. This made my transcript long, but also much more accurate. Most narratives could also easily be translated into grades (if your work was described as "excellent" that was the equivalent of an A). I did well at UCSC, graduating with honors, and then got into a master's program where I graduated with a 4.0.
Now, I'm not sure if my experience was typical, but it is possible to combine academic rigor with a lack of letter grades. After all, most performance reviews in the professional world are narrative-based and don't necessarily involve grades.
Hey, fellow banana slug. I graduated in '82. I too found narrative evaluations to be better than grades. And my poor roommate, who flunked out, had some of the most brutal narrative evaluations you can imagine. A simple "D" would have been much kinder.
But InMyDay® there were only 6,000 students total. Now there are close to 20,000. They made a big deal about how your teachers were the actual professors, not TAs. You can't possibly expect faculty to write narrative evaluations for that many students. Even with TAs, I think that would be infeasible.
Yes, I suspect that the burden on the faculty was a big part of why they dropped the narrative evaluations. Even when I was there, the detail level of the narrative would depend a lot on how big the class was, and which department it was in. Science classes tended to just list your exam grades with a brief mention of in-class participation, whereas humanities courses tended to have much longer evals which would get into the specifics of papers.
The burden on the faculty, yes, but also because Chancellor Sinsheimer was disgusted at the reputation UCSC was developing and wanted to implement grades to make the place seem less flaky. There was a huuuuge fight about it (happened in 1980, I was there!) between Sinsheimer and the old-school faculty who felt tremendous ownership of the school and its ideals.
There's a great oral history project called Seeds of Something Different that covers the history of UCSC. It's available for free as a PDF somewhere on the UCSC website. It's only two volumes so you'd better get started! :-)
I’m glad you posted this because I was just thinking that the obvious solution was to have teachers describe their students’ performance rather than throw letter grades at it (obviously class size would need to accommodate for this).
Though a drawback would be the lack of a relative standing measure, which would make it hard to know just how much you sucked (or ruled). EDIT: It just occurred to me a simple numbered class rank could serve this purpose far better than a letter grade.
I too had the opposite experience--at an art school in the 90s, no less. Everyone I knew was very hard-working, came in early and stayed late, etc. No one was trying to get away with presenting empty space at critiques. In my literature and theory classes, it would have been shameful to come in without having done the readings. I doubt it's still like that. The school culture went heavy down the gender and identity road. Now everyone there seems like a brain-dead non-binary bot.
I like this a lot. It reminds me of my attitude toward movie reviews or album reviews... I don't want to see stars or scores. I don't even read the ones that do that. I want a descriptive review that tells me what the movie or album is like, so that I can decide if I'm interested. And, if the review includes "oh and it just sucks all around" or "I think it's the best one all year!", that's great too. But no numeric ratings for me.
It’s interesting: I went to the University of Chicago at roughly the same time, in the mid 1990’s. The U of C had an opposite ethos at the time, students tending to be odd but maniacally obsessed with dour academic rigor.
I lived in a dorm for transfer students for much of the time, and it seemed like every year there were a few Evergreen students who transferred to the U of C in what I can only think was a wild pendulum lurch in the opposite direction.
The University of Chicago is and was always (at least since William Rainey Harper was running things) relentlessly serious about the "Life of the Mind". I went there in the sixties...crazies and eccentrics welcome, but only smart ones. Lazy bull-shitters and dull douche-bags, please go away...go to Evergreen where you belong.
Alum here from the ‘90s. I got to hear Prof Paul Salley say at an Alumni event, in his best Southie: “These kids now are all really smart and everything, but I kinda miss the weirdos, ‘ya know?”
My daughter is a college junior and just had a really rough fall term. She did a really bad job on multiple final papers and projects, and spent much of the break dreading the release of grades. When they finally came out, she was shocked to have gotten straight As. She’s actually, seriously considering going to one or two professors and asking why she didn’t get a lower grade.
I don't see the problem. Let's just agree that both grades and a degree are meaningless. If you have a licensing body, then the certificate will be meaningful, but what is the point of a liberal arts degree? (I want to clarify, I see the point of a liberal arts education, I just don't know why it needs to be certified)
Licensing certifications don't help employers to distinguish between job candidates, though, which is (in theory) an essential purpose of grades at the college/graduate level.
Yea, but what job requires a liberal arts degree? Most that can actually benefit should really need a portfolio (eg, one of those packets that comedy writers submit).
Otherwise, just write you studied X years at whatever university. What difference does it make if you "passed" or not?
You have a choice between someone who brilliantly passed a liberal arts degree and someone who abjectly failed. Which one is likely to be the more interesting candidate?
Absent other data, the degree is an indication of sticking with something over a long period of time. Obviously the sentiment of the article and the comments is that college is just a complete waste of time, but IMHO, that hasn't been the case - people who can get to the end of a 4-year degree have had to demonstrate some amount of tenacity, ability to learn and grow, and long-term thinking, all things that are useful in a career.
I disagree that college is a waste of time. I think education is wonderful and valuable. I'm just skeptical that the degree in and of itself is worthwhile.
I think that what a degree proves you have, above and beyond someone who doesn't have a degree, is the means and ability to jump through hoops. And I think there are better ways to show that.
How is that different than receiving a degree? Unless you're suggesting that failing classes for four straight years is the same as passing those same classes?
Failing a large portion of students would put colleges in the position of trying to market a product where people pay six figures for something they may or may not receive. That is a tough sell.
I'm thinking, though, that doesn't explain K12 public schools, where students can't fail out before they reach the legal school leaving age, and where they are not paying tuition.
I went to New College of Florida. We didn't have grades, and it was fine. When I blew off classes or assignments, I failed. The narrative evals were reasonably reflective of my performance. None of my econ, poly sci, or philosophy courses had an art component. So I guess YMMV on this depending on institution and student body.
Fwiw, I think this model is more valuable for higher level classes than intro or surveys. I also don't think it's generalizable to higher ed writ large.
I'm a math teacher, and the program I went through at my teacher's college was, frankly, a joke. I was able to turn things in late all the time for full credit. I was constantly doing the math on the bare minimum of the work I could do to keep an A. It all felt like brainless busy work, and I just had no motivation to do it. At one point, I literally did not turn in a portion of my final and somehow was still passed with a B. The math classes I took were the only rigorous ones that really held us to any standards.
It sounds like Greendale College has higher standards. Wait. Was Community based on Evergreen College. I also enjoy how they have stolen Ohio States tic of using the capitalized definite article in their name.
No school is going to 'make grades meaningful' because it's instant financial suicide. The current system of tenured professorships will collapse before the majority of schools agree on standards.
My undergraduate and graduate education were in England in the '80s, and both grades and exams meant a lot there--because even though I was an English Lit/Classics major, the faculty clearly believed it was as important for students to be challenged and evaluated in these "soft" subjects as rigorously as any other department.
I loved it, but the American students I met who were there for just a year felt it was an endless slog of reading and writing papers, and the year-long courses felt like marathons as opposed to quarter-long classes.
And ironically, I just took my first course at Evergreen last summer, in Audio for Film. Great teacher, fine facilities, and since I wasn't doing it for credit but experience, that worked for me just fine too.
I guess it's like what Tom Lehrer says, "life is like an open sewer. You tend to get out of it what you put into it."
I'm an American who has always done much better at exams and long papers than I have at keeping track of all the tiny bullshit busywork that rounds out grades here. My exam scores were so much better than my grades in high school that I was a serious applicant to top UK unis but not any top 50 US colleges. At once point I was admitted to Imperial College London based on exam scores and intended to go to England for university instead of staying in the US, but sadly for financial reasons that wasn't possible.
At last I am escaping US style busywork and going to a European country where the course grade is just the exam for my master's degree next year. I can't wait to go to a university that treats its students as adults who can manage their own study habits to learn what they need to learn, rather than forcing everybody into a cookie cutter box of busywork.
I had a different experience at a university that had originally done written evaluations in place of grades. Grades had been added by the time I enrolled, and written evals were still there but less emphasized. The reasoning for the change was primarily for the downstream effects; grad schools and occasional employers care about GPAs, so not having one could hurt some of the students. The best professors I had were universally against the change and felt grades were a way for lazy teachers to skate by, and the worst/laziest teachers I had did indeed love the change. I will say that the written evaluations I received from the good professors were actually quite good, and showed that they had paid attention to what was happening in the class.
My impression is that for cases where the teachers and students both care about actually learning the course material grades get in the way and hurt learning. But if either side is just going through the motions then grades are the simpler and more efficient option. Honestly the latter scenario is probably *vastly* more common than the former, so most universities should just go with the flow and use grades like everyone else, but I could see dropping them being the better option in some cases.
They should invite you to be the commencement speaker at Evergreen, where you can thank the school for having prepared you for success in the low-pressure, laid-back career of comedy writing.
I had much the opposite experience with no grades in college. I started at UC Santa Cruz in 1997, and we were the last class for which grades were optional. I had attended an academic high school with a lot of ambitious students who were prone to be very competitive about grades, so this greatly appealed to me.
Once at UCSC, I found the narrative evaluations to be better than grades - instead of a single letter, the evaluation would explain exactly how you performed in the class. This made my transcript long, but also much more accurate. Most narratives could also easily be translated into grades (if your work was described as "excellent" that was the equivalent of an A). I did well at UCSC, graduating with honors, and then got into a master's program where I graduated with a 4.0.
Now, I'm not sure if my experience was typical, but it is possible to combine academic rigor with a lack of letter grades. After all, most performance reviews in the professional world are narrative-based and don't necessarily involve grades.
Hey, fellow banana slug. I graduated in '82. I too found narrative evaluations to be better than grades. And my poor roommate, who flunked out, had some of the most brutal narrative evaluations you can imagine. A simple "D" would have been much kinder.
But InMyDay® there were only 6,000 students total. Now there are close to 20,000. They made a big deal about how your teachers were the actual professors, not TAs. You can't possibly expect faculty to write narrative evaluations for that many students. Even with TAs, I think that would be infeasible.
Yes, I suspect that the burden on the faculty was a big part of why they dropped the narrative evaluations. Even when I was there, the detail level of the narrative would depend a lot on how big the class was, and which department it was in. Science classes tended to just list your exam grades with a brief mention of in-class participation, whereas humanities courses tended to have much longer evals which would get into the specifics of papers.
The burden on the faculty, yes, but also because Chancellor Sinsheimer was disgusted at the reputation UCSC was developing and wanted to implement grades to make the place seem less flaky. There was a huuuuge fight about it (happened in 1980, I was there!) between Sinsheimer and the old-school faculty who felt tremendous ownership of the school and its ideals.
I can’t believe I was ignorant of UCSC’s history! (Class of 2008)
There's a great oral history project called Seeds of Something Different that covers the history of UCSC. It's available for free as a PDF somewhere on the UCSC website. It's only two volumes so you'd better get started! :-)
I’m glad you posted this because I was just thinking that the obvious solution was to have teachers describe their students’ performance rather than throw letter grades at it (obviously class size would need to accommodate for this).
Though a drawback would be the lack of a relative standing measure, which would make it hard to know just how much you sucked (or ruled). EDIT: It just occurred to me a simple numbered class rank could serve this purpose far better than a letter grade.
I too had the opposite experience--at an art school in the 90s, no less. Everyone I knew was very hard-working, came in early and stayed late, etc. No one was trying to get away with presenting empty space at critiques. In my literature and theory classes, it would have been shameful to come in without having done the readings. I doubt it's still like that. The school culture went heavy down the gender and identity road. Now everyone there seems like a brain-dead non-binary bot.
I like this a lot. It reminds me of my attitude toward movie reviews or album reviews... I don't want to see stars or scores. I don't even read the ones that do that. I want a descriptive review that tells me what the movie or album is like, so that I can decide if I'm interested. And, if the review includes "oh and it just sucks all around" or "I think it's the best one all year!", that's great too. But no numeric ratings for me.
It’s interesting: I went to the University of Chicago at roughly the same time, in the mid 1990’s. The U of C had an opposite ethos at the time, students tending to be odd but maniacally obsessed with dour academic rigor.
I lived in a dorm for transfer students for much of the time, and it seemed like every year there were a few Evergreen students who transferred to the U of C in what I can only think was a wild pendulum lurch in the opposite direction.
The University of Chicago is and was always (at least since William Rainey Harper was running things) relentlessly serious about the "Life of the Mind". I went there in the sixties...crazies and eccentrics welcome, but only smart ones. Lazy bull-shitters and dull douche-bags, please go away...go to Evergreen where you belong.
Alum here from the ‘90s. I got to hear Prof Paul Salley say at an Alumni event, in his best Southie: “These kids now are all really smart and everything, but I kinda miss the weirdos, ‘ya know?”
My daughter is a college junior and just had a really rough fall term. She did a really bad job on multiple final papers and projects, and spent much of the break dreading the release of grades. When they finally came out, she was shocked to have gotten straight As. She’s actually, seriously considering going to one or two professors and asking why she didn’t get a lower grade.
I don't see the problem. Let's just agree that both grades and a degree are meaningless. If you have a licensing body, then the certificate will be meaningful, but what is the point of a liberal arts degree? (I want to clarify, I see the point of a liberal arts education, I just don't know why it needs to be certified)
Licensing certifications don't help employers to distinguish between job candidates, though, which is (in theory) an essential purpose of grades at the college/graduate level.
Yea, but what job requires a liberal arts degree? Most that can actually benefit should really need a portfolio (eg, one of those packets that comedy writers submit).
Otherwise, just write you studied X years at whatever university. What difference does it make if you "passed" or not?
You have a choice between someone who brilliantly passed a liberal arts degree and someone who abjectly failed. Which one is likely to be the more interesting candidate?
For what role? If you're looking for an interesting candidate, interview them.
Absent other data, the degree is an indication of sticking with something over a long period of time. Obviously the sentiment of the article and the comments is that college is just a complete waste of time, but IMHO, that hasn't been the case - people who can get to the end of a 4-year degree have had to demonstrate some amount of tenacity, ability to learn and grow, and long-term thinking, all things that are useful in a career.
I disagree that college is a waste of time. I think education is wonderful and valuable. I'm just skeptical that the degree in and of itself is worthwhile.
I think that what a degree proves you have, above and beyond someone who doesn't have a degree, is the means and ability to jump through hoops. And I think there are better ways to show that.
Ignoring your framing of having the ability to stick to a goal for nearly a half-decade as "jump[ing] through hoops", what is your "better" proposal?
If you studied English for 4 years, write on your resume: "studied English for 4 years at X school, with an emphasis on..."
What does it matter if you received a degree? What information does that convey?
How is that different than receiving a degree? Unless you're suggesting that failing classes for four straight years is the same as passing those same classes?
“Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger
Failing a large portion of students would put colleges in the position of trying to market a product where people pay six figures for something they may or may not receive. That is a tough sell.
Interesting idea.
I'm thinking, though, that doesn't explain K12 public schools, where students can't fail out before they reach the legal school leaving age, and where they are not paying tuition.
I went to New College of Florida. We didn't have grades, and it was fine. When I blew off classes or assignments, I failed. The narrative evals were reasonably reflective of my performance. None of my econ, poly sci, or philosophy courses had an art component. So I guess YMMV on this depending on institution and student body.
Fwiw, I think this model is more valuable for higher level classes than intro or surveys. I also don't think it's generalizable to higher ed writ large.
I'm a math teacher, and the program I went through at my teacher's college was, frankly, a joke. I was able to turn things in late all the time for full credit. I was constantly doing the math on the bare minimum of the work I could do to keep an A. It all felt like brainless busy work, and I just had no motivation to do it. At one point, I literally did not turn in a portion of my final and somehow was still passed with a B. The math classes I took were the only rigorous ones that really held us to any standards.
It sounds like Greendale College has higher standards. Wait. Was Community based on Evergreen College. I also enjoy how they have stolen Ohio States tic of using the capitalized definite article in their name.
No school is going to 'make grades meaningful' because it's instant financial suicide. The current system of tenured professorships will collapse before the majority of schools agree on standards.
My undergraduate and graduate education were in England in the '80s, and both grades and exams meant a lot there--because even though I was an English Lit/Classics major, the faculty clearly believed it was as important for students to be challenged and evaluated in these "soft" subjects as rigorously as any other department.
I loved it, but the American students I met who were there for just a year felt it was an endless slog of reading and writing papers, and the year-long courses felt like marathons as opposed to quarter-long classes.
And ironically, I just took my first course at Evergreen last summer, in Audio for Film. Great teacher, fine facilities, and since I wasn't doing it for credit but experience, that worked for me just fine too.
I guess it's like what Tom Lehrer says, "life is like an open sewer. You tend to get out of it what you put into it."
I'm an American who has always done much better at exams and long papers than I have at keeping track of all the tiny bullshit busywork that rounds out grades here. My exam scores were so much better than my grades in high school that I was a serious applicant to top UK unis but not any top 50 US colleges. At once point I was admitted to Imperial College London based on exam scores and intended to go to England for university instead of staying in the US, but sadly for financial reasons that wasn't possible.
At last I am escaping US style busywork and going to a European country where the course grade is just the exam for my master's degree next year. I can't wait to go to a university that treats its students as adults who can manage their own study habits to learn what they need to learn, rather than forcing everybody into a cookie cutter box of busywork.
I had a different experience at a university that had originally done written evaluations in place of grades. Grades had been added by the time I enrolled, and written evals were still there but less emphasized. The reasoning for the change was primarily for the downstream effects; grad schools and occasional employers care about GPAs, so not having one could hurt some of the students. The best professors I had were universally against the change and felt grades were a way for lazy teachers to skate by, and the worst/laziest teachers I had did indeed love the change. I will say that the written evaluations I received from the good professors were actually quite good, and showed that they had paid attention to what was happening in the class.
My impression is that for cases where the teachers and students both care about actually learning the course material grades get in the way and hurt learning. But if either side is just going through the motions then grades are the simpler and more efficient option. Honestly the latter scenario is probably *vastly* more common than the former, so most universities should just go with the flow and use grades like everyone else, but I could see dropping them being the better option in some cases.
It's possible to have grades and written evaluations. I do it all the time.
I now realize that Brett Weinstein deserved to be at Evergreen. He stayed for more than 2 quarters.
What the shit?? *I* came to evergreen in '98!
Any chance you remember what dorm you were in? Because I...don't. It was the big cement one on Indian Pipe Loop.
FWIW I believe I ended up finding some less ridiculous and more rigorous classes, but there was a lot of goofiness along the way.
I roomed with a sophomore who already knew the lay of the land so I was in one of the six unit spots higher up in the alphabet. "R" I think.
Dude, Cinnabon. Nearly spit out my coffee.
They should invite you to be the commencement speaker at Evergreen, where you can thank the school for having prepared you for success in the low-pressure, laid-back career of comedy writing.
You need to have murdered cops to be the graduation speaker, I believe.