All around campus, there are reminders to fill out course evaluations. Course evaluations have gone digital! Get yours submitted soon so you can see your grades earlier!
Tell me, does no one see this double standard? Students are evaluated by one letter! We get labeled with one letter to describe our performance in a class. That means that 140 hours spent working for and participating in a classroom are described by one letter. All of the papers written, all of the discussions contributed to, all of the tests taken, are described by one letter. Yet we are encouraged to spend time thoughtfully evaluating a course.
This double standard underlies a universal educational flaw. On the one hand students are expected to learn for their own enrichment. Liberal arts colleges in particular make no secret of the fact that they do not exist to train future laborers. Yet, on the other hand students need to be able to make money with a college degree. Students must focus on their future employment prospects and on their current learning process.
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Students can no longer serve both masters. Perhaps due to the major uptick in college tuition costs, education has come to center on the economics of learning. And in so doing, learning has become a monetized system. A classroom is now a market in which work is exchanged for grades.
Take extra credit for example: if a student’s grade is low, the student can simply perform some task and their teacher will add more points to their grade bank. Irrelevant to any learning goals, students now focus on teachers’ judgment instead of exhibiting any genuine interest in course material.
I caught up with some of the intelligentsia on campus to hear what they had to say about modern grading systems. “I don’t know what the solution is,” said Sam Mercier ’16. “Grad schools and medical schools may refuse students if they have not been graded. Yet, grades mean different things in different schools. Elite schools, such as Harvard, are notorious for grade inflation.”
Isabel Mckenzie ’19 believes that more discourse between educators and students about their progress would be a step in the right direction. “If students could express their own assessment of their progress to teachers, grades would become more holistic and meaningful.” As it currently stands, grades make no attempt to improve students’ academic ability in any way; they exist only as a convenient labeling system.
So while students evaluate their courses to provide valuable feedback to faculty, students are paid a one-letter indicator of academic worth. Although, I do not expect the system of grading to change, I hope to bring awareness to the shortcomings intrinsic to colleges’ evaluation system.
