UGA Prof Lets Students Choose Own Grades for "Stress Reduction"

[alcoholbob]

How in the hell are companies supposed to know if a person is competent if the diploma is basically toilet paper? This is especially important in STEM fields. I can see doing away with grades for the useless liberal arts majors, but with regard to the majors upon which this nation's survival is dependent (engineering), hell fucking no. Getting good grades in a hard engineering curriculum is indicative of a highly intelligent person with superior analytic problem solving skills.

By the school you went to, companies can guess what your SAT score was and what kind of grades you needed to get in.

 

[Maxima1]

By the school you went to, companies can guess what your SAT score was and what kind of grades you needed to get in.

Having pass/fail will make people slack off and do the bare minimum. It would undoubtedly negatively effect the returns on education.

 

[Moonbeam]

You both seem to have mistaken my challenge of @Moonbeam 's statement as some sort of advocacy for or against such a system. I had no such intent.

I took the challenge to be that grades don't have to be on a curve and that entering into such a competition is a choice we make. I thought both points you made were logically excellent and technically shred. I noticed I had failed to include that fact and considered editing to add that in but didn't because I thought where I went with the issue was more relevant. We are born and bred in that system to the point it's invisible to the point where one sees grading on a curve as a typical reality and to the point where we are oblivious of the implications. I thing the education system is as I described.

So is what I took as your challenge the one you intended, and does my acknowledgement of it here satisfy you that I agree with the points you made. I just saw them as infrequently applied real world wise, in the first case and irrelevant in the second because of the universality of the game.

 

[Moonbeam]

Having pass/fail will make people slack off and do the bare minimum. It would undoubtedly negatively effect the returns on education.

It would on an education system in which the objective is to pass rather than to learn anything. Why would it be surprising that if you create a game where a pass offers personal advantage, the game will be played for that purpose and that purpose alone. If you had to kill a fly to eat, would you eat everything or leave some out to gather flies. We are the system and the system is us. Only people who want to change the system will. Most will just eat, maggots and all, right. Why buck the system. We love our prison. We worship it. It gives us definition, identity, and meaning. If only there were not this distant discomfort and sense that something is missing. What could it be, what could it be. What is the Matrix is one way I've seen the question put.

 

[bshole]

By the school you went to, companies can guess what your SAT score was and what kind of grades you needed to get in.

Ah that is the rub.... what if it spread to high schools?

What engineering schools do prove is how well a student is able to learn and apply new knowledge. Engineering is different than many other majors in that there is a shit ton of lab work. You have to design and build circuits, write functioning software, etc... That kind of shit can't be faked. You can either do it or you can't and that will be reflected in your grades for those particular subjects. That is why major GPA is much more useful than the overall GPA.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

If grades aren't good at measuring the final product why should they be used for selection in the intermediate steps?

And you've given the reason why pass/fail won't work unless we have a two track system which will limit people who decide to go back later.

You are welcome at my place anytime but if you tell my college professor who is the pre-med advisor that pass/fail is the way to go I can't guarantee your safety

 

[interchange]

I took the challenge to be that grades don't have to be on a curve and that entering into such a competition is a choice we make. I thought both points you made were logically excellent and technically shred. I noticed I had failed to include that fact and considered editing to add that in but didn't because I thought where I went with the issue was more relevant. We are born and bred in that system to the point it's invisible to the point where one sees grading on a curve as a typical reality and to the point where we are oblivious of the implications. I thing the education system is as I described.

So is what I took as your challenge the one you intended, and does my acknowledgement of it here satisfy you that I agree with the points you made. I just saw them as infrequently applied real world wise, in the first case and irrelevant in the second because of the universality of the game.

I am curious. What would you think of the people indoctrinated into this system who, by virtue of genetic gifts, are destined to be declared its victors? Would they flourish and value highly the rewards they had to do no hard work to earn? Would they have high self esteem because people laud them left and right?

Perhaps they may hate such a system intrinsically just as much as those born with a genetic predisposition to lose. After all, it is not the experience of the winner to be admired and understood by his peers. And it was not them who chose that the value of their performance was the meaningful representative of their worth. Perhaps they are not unlike any other person -- ultimately valuing their humanity and bond with others above any sense of superiority. Yet, their experience is they are restricted from the former because society grants them abundant supply of the latter despite never asking for it.

It is no wonder so many gifted children struggle in school. Sometimes that failure is consciously intentional. How often do you think they may even be accused of trying to assert superiority when in fact they were torturously attempting the opposite?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Oh really? There's no way a medical school can discern a barely marginal student from a high performer without GPA?

Of course they can but that's irrelevant. People who may put a sharp knife in your body are expected to be among the best of the best. Grades for a basis to discern "pretty good" from excellent, and the latter still aren't guaranteed spots in top programs. I think the guy who coasted through with the bare minimum can be culled, but that means a huge increase of effort just to determine who the bottom feeders are. Harsh I know, but that's the reality. As these schools determine who to accept those with "almost the right stuff" aren't on the list and pass fail makes selection far far harder.

What will happen is recommendations will count for even more and if you do very well but your prof doesn't like you? Who's to say you weren't marginal? It's not like you will ever know what's in the recommendation.

Are grades the only thing? No. That would be one major element, but top tier schools will look at the undergrad schools reputation and their past track record as far as how the recommendations lined up with the reality of the person put forward as a candidate. They'll look at your personal life in your activities such as volunteer work if appropriate and the interview for the final cut.

Some schools do have metrics other than grades which are used where appropriate. My son is a beneficiary of that kind of thinking. His grades were good, but he's not a bookworm striving for the 4.0. Instead he plays LOL more than I would have liked but that's how he is and he's far from being in trouble academically. His college has a very selective honors science program and they do not select based on the highest high school GPA. They do have a lower end cutoff but it's not draconian and BTW this is done before admission because some people apply to get in this program and the college gives notice of the results well before most other college's deadline.

The process takes an entire day and students are placed in groups and tested and observed. Not a paper test, but "here is a situation, figure it out". During the morning individuals are given several scenarios and the students tackle them as seems appropriate. After lunch the individuals return to the group and discuss what they did and their thoughts. Then there was a group project where they figured out who would take what part of the exercise and everyone would go back and discuss further until time ran out or they reached an answer.

The problems were somewhat abstract so there wasn't a clear right or wrong. When that was done each applicant was called in an a panel of professors, one from physics, chemistry and biology looked at the results and questioned as to why they did this or that.

Done.

Three weeks later students got calls to let them know if they were one of the twenty or so. Obviously my son got in. Yes this is me being proud however I believe relevant. This 10 hour process wasn't about solving a problem it was about thinking. Who had insight? Who could do well with the abstract under pressure. Who thought best outside the box of normal constraints and conditions as seen in all of their prior education. Who was a leader in the group dynamic and was it positive or negative? Could these people work with one another and on and on. The school wanted the best minds not the best grades for this program.

Looping back to the start- hey here's no grades being given. But pressure to perform? It was there in spades. There was no "feel good" and it was very much pass/fail. The kids who were tested loved every minute of it because they had a chance to put their brains to work. It was fun.

Now multiply this rigorous pass fail scenario by many orders of magnitude and then one might have a basis for pass/fail in the sciences, but with other areas? I'm not so sure and the amount of effort put into something like this is staggering. No one has the time and resources to scale this up for an entire college or university.

Bottom line, grades are a filter, an imperfect one perhaps but useful for going beyond undergrad especially for top tier programs.

Not everyone is going to feel good.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I am curious. What would you think of the people indoctrinated into this system who, by virtue of genetic gifts, are destined to be declared its victors? Would they flourish and value highly the rewards they had to do no hard work to earn? Would they have high self esteem because people laud them left and right?

Perhaps they may hate such a system intrinsically just as much as those born with a genetic predisposition to lose. After all, it is not the experience of the winner to be admired and understood by his peers. And it was not them who chose that the value of their performance was the meaningful representative of their worth. Perhaps they are not unlike any other person -- ultimately valuing their humanity and bond with others above any sense of superiority. Yet, their experience is they are restricted from the former because society grants them abundant supply of the latter despite never asking for it.

It is no wonder so many gifted children struggle in school. Sometimes that failure is consciously intentional. How often do you think they may even be accused of trying to assert superiority when in fact they were torturously attempting the opposite?

Gibbs rules for academia-

Rule #1- There is always a bigger shark in the ocean, meaning if you think you are the greatest ever someone else can put you in your place. To not have to work and compete in an appropriate program you had better be a Gauss or Euler.

 

[interchange]

Gibbs rules for academia-

Rule #1- There is always a bigger shark in the ocean, meaning if you think you are the greatest ever someone else can put you in your place. To not have to work and compete in an appropriate program you had better be a Gauss or Euler.

Funny how you have proven your rule to be false. I wonder what Gauss and Euler thought of themselves throughout time.

But such a quandary is not my point. My point is that big sharks may be disenfranchised from their community interests by virtue of being prized for their bigness. Sure. They could try to find a different ocean with bigger sharks and have an almost guaranteed success in doing so. But what if they have little interest in size-based competition? Perhaps they have chosen an ocean for different attributes altogether.

I think a system based on such relative comparisons to peers is designed to benefit the people in the middle, not the top.

 

[Smoblikat]

What decent person would want to compete for grades that are based on a curve. If you get an A that translates into value in life and win, it means somebody else loses out. Then you turn around and claim virtue over the losers you created.

Or everyone could earn A's...................

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Funny how you have proven your rule to be false. I wonder what Gauss and Euler thought of themselves throughout time.

But such a quandary is not my point. My point is that big sharks may be disenfranchised from their community interests by virtue of being prized for their bigness. Sure. They could try to find a different ocean with bigger sharks and have an almost guaranteed success in doing so. But what if they have little interest in size-based competition? Perhaps they have chosen an ocean for different attributes altogether.

I think a system based on such relative comparisons to peers is designed to benefit the people in the middle, not the top.

I am very familiar with Cornell, especially their vet school. No one is so brilliant that they cannot be rejected as unacceptable. I have also witnessed a brilliant med student abused mercilessly. I was assigned to a team at Albert Einstein North in Philly and I would up dating the senior resident for a while. She was the ruthless one but with a purpose. She even brought it up to me because no doubt she saw my reaction to the interactions between herself and the student. In short she know this woman was smart, too smart for the patient's own good and Ellen, the resident said she had to break her for everyone's best interest. Why? Because she was brilliant and in her attitude strongly spoke of overconfidence, to the point a belief what she was incapable of error. That was demonstrated when like everyone she made errors. Her response was almost surreal. I have no idea how the student turned out but I hope she learned something.

And that brings us back to sharks. Reality is the biggest of all. Einstein was a recognized genius and rightly so, however even he was mortal and will always be know as the guy who got quantum physics pretty much wrong. Spooky action at a distance is real. Now it doesn't mean the man was inferior in any way, but he was a man. Have you read any of his bios? It's been a very long time since I have but he's an interesting study.

I will concede that a Gauss can define his own status, but for the 99.99999999% remaining it is true and science is a team effort these days. Rare indeed are the people who can tell CERN to stuff it and go on their own way.

 

[interchange]

I am very familiar with Cornell, especially their vet school. No one is so brilliant that they cannot be rejected as unacceptable. I have also witnessed a brilliant med student abused mercilessly. I was assigned to a team at Albert Einstein North in Philly and I would up dating the senior resident for a while. She was the ruthless one but with a purpose. She even brought it up to me because no doubt she saw my reaction to the interactions between herself and the student. In short she know this woman was smart, too smart for the patient's own good and Ellen, the resident said she had to break her for everyone's best interest. Why? Because she was brilliant and in her attitude strongly spoke of overconfidence, to the point a belief what she was incapable of error. That was demonstrated when like everyone she made errors. Her response was almost surreal. I have no idea how the student turned out but I hope she learned something.

An identity too vulnerable to reasonably challenge one's certainty is problematic indeed. Further complicated by reality affirming that you are right more often than your peers. Personally I don't believe that such a character has much to do with intelligence itself, but the combination can be quite grating and dangerous.

And medical culture is (generally) horrifically unhealthy. While greater intelligence independently enhances success, so long as requisite intelligence is present, it is a much less important attribute relative to other academic fields in my experience.

And that brings us back to sharks. Reality is the biggest of all. Einstein was a recognized genius and rightly so, however even he was mortal and will always be know as the guy who got quantum physics pretty much wrong. Spooky action at a distance is real. Now it doesn't mean the man was inferior in any way, but he was a man. Have you read any of his bios? It's been a very long time since I have but he's an interesting study.

I have, a bit, and also read his book on relativity. But I'm far from expert. My impression is that, while undoubtedly he recognized his genius and used this recognition to assert his beliefs about physics, inherently his most compelling desire was for the physics to be right and would be happy to be proven wrong.

I will concede that a Gauss can define his own status, but for the 99.99999999% remaining it is true and science is a team effort these days. Rare indeed are the people who can tell CERN to stuff it and go on their own way.

I think any lone wolf working on the same general principles as others to solve a common problem is destined to fail no matter their genius. Collective intelligence is greater, and the sheer volume of what has been observed and examined already is guaranteed to not be wholly comprehensible by anyone.

That said, past examples of genius are generally people who succeed because their ideas are novel and rejected by their peers because their genius doesn't conform to the paradigm everyone else accepts. This path is still open, but I wonder how many people with adequate intelligence toil in solitude never to have, perhaps by chance, stumbled upon or followed through on a paradigm shifting idea.

It's sad, because although those genius sharks are averse to comparisons based on the voracity of their appetite, what they still like to do most is eat.

 

[Blackjack200]

Of course they can but that's irrelevant. People who may put a sharp knife in your body are expected to be among the best of the best.

Oh spare me. Shitty civil engineers can kill just as many people as shitty doctors. The vast majority of physicians are not brilliant epidemiologists or surgeons but ordinary clinicians that prescribe statins and tell people to eat less salt.

Grades for a basis to discern "pretty good" from excellent, and the latter still aren't guaranteed spots in top programs. I think the guy who coasted through with the bare minimum can be culled, but that means a huge increase of effort just to determine who the bottom feeders are. Harsh I know, but that's the reality. As these schools determine who to accept those with "almost the right stuff" aren't on the list and pass fail makes selection far far harder.

GPA is not used to cull the "bottom feeders" though, it's used to keep out the 3.5 gpa students so a 4.0 is needed to have a shot. How many 2.0 students are going to be acing their MCATs? If a 2.0 student did ace their MCAT, don't you think that's warrants a closer look anyway?

What will happen is recommendations will count for even more and if you do very well but your prof doesn't like you? Who's to say you weren't marginal? It's not like you will ever know what's in the recommendation.

Are grades the only thing? No. That would be one major element, but top tier schools will look at the undergrad schools reputation and their past track record as far as how the recommendations lined up with the reality of the person put forward as a candidate. They'll look at your personal life in your activities such as volunteer work if appropriate and the interview for the final cut.

Some schools do have metrics other than grades which are used where appropriate. My son is a beneficiary of that kind of thinking. His grades were good, but he's not a bookworm striving for the 4.0. Instead he plays LOL more than I would have liked but that's how he is and he's far from being in trouble academically. His college has a very selective honors science program and they do not select based on the highest high school GPA. They do have a lower end cutoff but it's not draconian and BTW this is done before admission because some people apply to get in this program and the college gives notice of the results well before most other college's deadline.

The process takes an entire day and students are placed in groups and tested and observed. Not a paper test, but "here is a situation, figure it out". During the morning individuals are given several scenarios and the students tackle them as seems appropriate. After lunch the individuals return to the group and discuss what they did and their thoughts. Then there was a group project where they figured out who would take what part of the exercise and everyone would go back and discuss further until time ran out or they reached an answer.

The problems were somewhat abstract so there wasn't a clear right or wrong. When that was done each applicant was called in an a panel of professors, one from physics, chemistry and biology looked at the results and questioned as to why they did this or that.

Done.

Three weeks later students got calls to let them know if they were one of the twenty or so. Obviously my son got in. Yes this is me being proud however I believe relevant. This 10 hour process wasn't about solving a problem it was about thinking. Who had insight? Who could do well with the abstract under pressure. Who thought best outside the box of normal constraints and conditions as seen in all of their prior education. Who was a leader in the group dynamic and was it positive or negative? Could these people work with one another and on and on. The school wanted the best minds not the best grades for this program.

Looping back to the start- hey here's no grades being given. But pressure to perform? It was there in spades. There was no "feel good" and it was very much pass/fail. The kids who were tested loved every minute of it because they had a chance to put their brains to work. It was fun.

Now multiply this rigorous pass fail scenario by many orders of magnitude and then one might have a basis for pass/fail in the sciences, but with other areas? I'm not so sure and the amount of effort put into something like this is staggering. No one has the time and resources to scale this up for an entire college or university.

Bottom line, grades are a filter, an imperfect one perhaps but useful for going beyond undergrad especially for top tier programs.

Not everyone is going to feel good.

Eliminating gpa from consideration for graduate and professional school admission is not the Gordian knot you make it out to be, and your last sentence showing contempt for more supportive systems in education says it all.

 

[Moonbeam]

An identity too vulnerable to reasonably challenge one's certainty is problematic indeed. Further complicated by reality affirming that you are right more often than your peers. Personally I don't believe that such a character has much to do with intelligence itself, but the combination can be quite grating and dangerous.

And medical culture is (generally) horrifically unhealthy. While greater intelligence independently enhances success, so long as requisite intelligence is present, it is a much less important attribute relative to other academic fields in my experience.



I have, a bit, and also read his book on relativity. But I'm far from expert. My impression is that, while undoubtedly he recognized his genius and used this recognition to assert his beliefs about physics, inherently his most compelling desire was for the physics to be right and would be happy to be proven wrong.



I think any lone wolf working on the same general principles as others to solve a common problem is destined to fail no matter their genius. Collective intelligence is greater, and the sheer volume of what has been observed and examined already is guaranteed to not be wholly comprehensible by anyone.

That said, past examples of genius are generally people who succeed because their ideas are novel and rejected by their peers because their genius doesn't conform to the paradigm everyone else accepts. This path is still open, but I wonder how many people with adequate intelligence toil in solitude never to have, perhaps by chance, stumbled upon or followed through on a paradigm shifting idea.

It's sad, because although those genius sharks are averse to comparisons based on the voracity of their appetite, what they still like to do most is eat.

If you want a paradigm shift consider the possibility that everybody hates themselves because they were put down as children. You are in a position to observe it and have access to the means to discover it in yourself. I have to go now, and will respond to your last wonderful reply to me when I can.

 

[interchange]

Oh spare me. Shitty civil engineers can kill just as many people as shitty doctors. The vast majority of physicians are not brilliant epidemiologists or surgeons but ordinary clinicians that prescribe statins and tell people to eat less salt.

GPA is not used to cull the "bottom feeders" though, it's used to keep out the 3.5 gpa students so a 4.0 is needed to have a shot. How many 2.0 students are going to be acing their MCATs? If a 2.0 student did ace their MCAT, don't you think that's warrants a closer look anyway?

Eliminating gpa from consideration for graduate and professional school admission is not the Gordian knot you make it out to be, and your last sentence showing contempt for more supportive systems in education says it all.

I have no experience with med school admissions except as an applicant. I was a non traditional applicant having had a career in engineering first and attending a school with significantly lower average GPAs than places with a lot of pre meds. Some of the better schools I applied to really liked me and some of the lesser schools rejected me without even a secondary application. But even among non-trads I was still an unusual applicant, and although my GPA was low compared to a typical matriculant, it was still good. I imagine a 2.0 GPA would get flatly rejected no matter the MCAT score. Perhaps a very special case minority applicant to a very underserved state school.

In the case of medical education though, conformity is actually very important. People have to survive grueling (not necessarily intellectually) training and be able to be generally liked by colleagues and patients and not break a bunch of rules like confidentiality. For that value, GPA is likely a better predictor than for what matters most in other fields.

 

[agent00f]

Of course. Competitive sports are hideous.

You were hooked into that game before you entered school. Our whole culture of centerless people is based on grading each other in categories that are meaningless. We invent as many as we can to accommodate all manner of those who have nothing to feel good about.

Have you ever read the experiences of early teachers when they first taught those poor hapless ignorant savages in Polynesia. The kids wouldn't either not answer questions or they would all raise their hands together. In the west we have specialized in hating ourselves so badly we really need to feel special. This educational technique is a tiny attempt to return to a better mental place. You surly see that hatred of others and personal feelings of failure are twins. Imagine the kinds of neurotic psychopaths a teacher like agent would produce with him as a judge of excellence. I do not see mental health as being successfully adjusted to a sick culture.

But there is little to be gained arguing this point in my opinion. The unconscious cultural assumptions of Americans in this area is massive. You might as well try to explain water to fish.

Objective evaluation is integral to competitive improvement. It's why those competitive cultures won against said "hapless savages", and losing has consequences.

You both seem to have mistaken my challenge of @Moonbeam 's statement as some sort of advocacy for or against such a system. I had no such intent.

That was just a more effective summary of your post. Just as the comment just above is an effective argument.

 

[agent00f]

I am curious. What would you think of the people indoctrinated into this system who, by virtue of genetic gifts, are destined to be declared its victors? Would they flourish and value highly the rewards they had to do no hard work to earn? Would they have high self esteem because people laud them left and right?

Perhaps they may hate such a system intrinsically just as much as those born with a genetic predisposition to lose. After all, it is not the experience of the winner to be admired and understood by his peers. And it was not them who chose that the value of their performance was the meaningful representative of their worth. Perhaps they are not unlike any other person -- ultimately valuing their humanity and bond with others above any sense of superiority. Yet, their experience is they are restricted from the former because society grants them abundant supply of the latter despite never asking for it.

It is no wonder so many gifted children struggle in school. Sometimes that failure is consciously intentional. How often do you think they may even be accused of trying to assert superiority when in fact they were torturously attempting the opposite?

The notion that smart people fail in school an urban myth.

 

[interchange]

The notion that smart people fail in school an urban myth.

Failure was a poor choice of words. It was intended as relative to their ability rather than in absolute.

 

[agent00f]

Failure was a poor choice of words. It was intended as relative to their ability rather than in absolute.

Sure I guess since there's usually an upper limit on grades.

 

[werepossum]

We shall now hear a ten second speech from each of our six hundred co-valedictorians. . .