Professors' Delusions Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

Normally, I won't be posting twice in one day, but this article from the New York Times caught my eye and my ire, and I couldn't resist.

As the child of a professor, I have been keenly aware of the song-and-dance surrounding grades in college for years. Mere hours after fall semester grades are released (usually when we are on a New Year's vacation) my mom will receive at least one, if not many, requests from students asking to talk about their grade (for those who don't know, that's code for "how can I convince you to give me a better grade"). However, I am also currently enrolled at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and know well the myriad of reasons a student might expect a higher grade. In this sense, I have a unique (read: superior) point of view on the matter.

The thing that set me off was Professor Marshall Grossman's comments in the beginning of the article. Let me be blunt so my ideas aren't misconstrued: If you think that a C is an average grade, you need to remove your head from your ass. Sure, we all remember the key in the corner of our grade school report cards (A = Outstanding, B = Above Average, C = Average, D = Below Average, E/F = Fail), but even a cursory analysis reveals this to be a steaming pile of horse shit.

The biggest problem is this: When is the last time you thought of a C-average (a 2.0) as acceptable? Which leads me to the second problem: If you think a C-average is acceptable, you definitely didn't go to Law School, Med School, etc. When has any post-secondary school ever seen a 2.0 as enough? If Prof. Grossman wants to crusade about the purity of the grading scale on his own time, that's his business, but in the meantime, he's putting students' futures in jeopardy.

The other thing that set me off (once I cooled down enough to read the rest of the article) was the litany of quotes from various professors and deans who, apparently, never went to college themselves. Here were a couple that stuck out:

"[Dean Hogge] said that if students developed a genuine interest in their field, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and intrinsically motivated learning could take place."

Sure, in a perfect world we'd all just sit around, get high, and expand the shit out of our minds, but as long as employers, grad schools, parents and the students themselves care about the quality of the learning that, supposedly, takes place, grades will never take a back seat.

Professor Brower said professors at Wisconsin emphasized that students must “read for knowledge and write with the goal of exploring ideas.”

Has this guy ever been to school? For some reason that needs to be researched, assigned reading is never as fun as reading for pleasure. Also, exploratory writing papers are few and far between. In the real world there are expectations meant to prove that you've done the reading, done the homework, been to class, etc.

Let me be very clear. I don't deny that grade inflation is a problem. On a five point scale, a two/C should be average. However, to say that students expect higher grades because they feel "entitled" to them demeans students. Students aren't that dumb (although they can be). Even if they don't know the reason, they expect B's and A's because they know others do too.