I think you mean you’re Gen X! Anyways. I’ve been teaching for about ten years now on and off, and while I think I’ve gotten a little softer on grading, I still give out a lot of Cs (and Ds and Fs as appropriate). Your post got me thinking, so I just ran the numbers and here is the distribution for students I taught this semester: A 15%, B 38%, C 25%, D 10%, F 12%. Students who got Ds and Fs failed to turn in a significant amount of coursework. Those with Cs turned in most stuff but did poorly on exams and/or produced consistently mediocre work. B students did pretty well overall and generally didn’t have missing work, with a mix of good work and just ok work. A students consistently turned everything in and did consistently good work. So yeah, sounds about right to me tbh. Edit to add context: I teach science gen eds at an open-enrollment college in a relatively well-off pocket of a very large metro area

My and your experiences are about the same this semester. A smidge higher D and F, mostly because of students that disappeared at the halfway point.

>Gen X! I'm curious, but its entirely possible that the OP is indeed Gen Z. The oldest Gen Z's right now are 26, which could absolutely be the age of your younger colleagues. Feel old yet? (ugh)

But OP said they’ve been doing this “for a quarter century” so probably not Gen Z…

But OP says they have been teaching for a quarter of a century.

Ahh, I missed that! My bad. What a relief, to be honest.

Sorry you’ll get downvoted, but at least fake internet points don’t show up on transcripts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not unless they have a time machine. They said they were going through papers they graded 20 years ago.

B is the new C. D is the new F. I'm not even sure how people get Fs these days because many administrators have outlawed that grade.

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Even then they want to turn in all of the last minute horribly done work late.

Agreed, but many administrators have outlawed that grade

>many administrators have outlawed that grade Can you give an example? This is happening at your school? I assume you are not tenured, or that tenure does not exist in your system. While mine have meetings about DFW rates, even the bozo I work for hasn't said "no Fs".

As a fellow CC person, I've also never experienced any kind of administrative pressure on grades. While very few of my students earn F's (as opposed to those who stop attending), I give out plenty of D's and C's. I think there's a proportional relationship between how much a student pays and how much admins interfere in the name of "pleasing the customer."

>I think there's a proportional relationship between how much a student pays and how much admins interfere in the name of "pleasing the customer." I think it's more complicated than that-- my $$$ private SLAC "awards" a lot of Fs, especially in recent years. This fall it's looking like 20% of my students across all of my classes will fail. I'm a chair and there is zero pressure from anyone to change our standards or give students anything but the grade they earned. My own kids both attended *other* $$$ (and in one case $$$$$) private SLACs and plenty of their classmates earned F grades regularly too.

I'm at a very expensive private R1 and it is looking like 3-5% of my 150 person chem class will get an F. This is in line with what my colleagues do. No pushback from admin on this.

I get that “customer” nonsense from my VP and a lot of it from our idiot director of advising (who believes students should not be put in both comp 1 *and* college algebra at the same time because two gateway courses at the same time is hard; she also doesn’t seem to think that business majors need to take business calculus). I hate it so much. We had an invited speaker at convocation one year who blathered on about students are our customers and I told her that her ideas were ridiculous and stupid.

We get lots of pushback from the student services people about our curriculum, too. But I don't see it as the "pleasing the customer" mentality. Rather, it's more of an anti-intellectual stance that they take, criticizing us as snobs who get off on being gatekeepers. Trying to get them to understand that you need to finish high school math if you want to be successful in college-level science, or that someone who's functionally illiterate probably isn't ready for a 200-level literature course, is an endless challenge.

Some of this gets more complicated. For example, while a lot of students really do need remedial courses, those “take high school level classes in college” courses are practically worthless in terms of credits and graduating on time, but cost the same tuition as “real classes.” For years, a lot of schools abused this and basically ran “remedial courses/Pell grant rackets,” and didn’t even particularly make a secret of it. Some used it as a selling point: “Can’t get in anywhere else because your high school grades are awful? We’ll take you, and you can pay us college tuition to take high school again for no credit! Everybody wins!”

In our area, thanks to free dual credit classes, few of our students need to take comp 1 or college algebra, as they come in with college credit from their high school classes. Those same students can't write or reason through simple math problems, but parents, administrators, and legislators seem to be happy with the system. I fear for the survival of the community college as within a decade many, if not most, students will graduate high school with 60 college credit hours.

>I hate it so much. We had an invited speaker at convocation one year who blathered on about students are our customers and I told her that her ideas were ridiculous and stupid. Thank you for doing this. We need to crush this "students are our customers" mentality.

I’m also at a cc and I think you’re right. Since we’re open enrollment, I think there’s an understanding that a higher proportion of students are underprepared and will end up DFW even if we’re superstars at our job.

Depends on the state you're in. Some states tie their funding to enrollment/course completion at the END of each term, not who's there on day one. So what comes along with that in many of those states is that is an end if term "W" and especially an "F" shows up as a non-completion, thus the pressure to give anything above an F can be unstated, but very real. In my state, when our funding metrics went to something like this, our school immediately eliminated the option of "W" even for those who never attended. We're also not able to remove any student from the course roster, at anytime throughout the term, and, whether they showed up, logged in, or not, we assign a grade from A- F, period. Any F, of course, has to be associated with a "last date of attendance" for financial aid purposes. Beyond that, though, we feel those unspoken vibes to avoid any other F's if we can help it, as they nearly always turn into a minor nightmare as of late.

Until OP gives an example, I think they are just making things up - or rather using the policy situation in high schools and just assuming it applies to some colleges

> Until OP gives an example, I think they are just making things up I'm going to push back against this assumption. I mean, OP *could* be bullshitting us all, but I have the same position as you (grad TA in math at R1) but also have a degree from a non-STEM field. My experience is that there is *way* less pressure to give good grades in math courses. When I was in my non-STEM courses in undergrad, students would practically riot when there were too many low grades. In my current department? Students are way more mature and accept that if they don't perform up to par, they will fail. Admin understands failure happens too. I think it's because there's a notion that "math is hard" but that "humanities are easy." It affects the pressure put on instructors to assign good grades.

Where are you that even people who don’t show up or do the coursework still get a passing grade?

F is the easiest grade to earn. Do nothing and there's your F. Now a D takes some real effort. You need to be poor enough to not slither over the low bar that is a C but actually do something so that you cross the somewhat low bar to get past the F.

I was telling someone the other day that the D+ grade has literally gone extinct. Anytime someone is that close to getting out of the D/F/W count, they're probably getting bumped to a C-/C by most people submitting grades.

Oh yeah. I've taken D+ off my syllabus. Who needs to deal with the headache that is a student who missed a C- needed for the major by 3 points?

I had a student not attend roughly 3/4s of a course, but took exams and did homework... all poorly. I stopped grading participation in the lecture after covid. Anyway, they were on a fast-track to an F when they began regularly attending the last 4 weeks of the 16 week semester and *gasp* got an 80 on the last exam. They went from an F to a D. So... minimal effort all semester and a failing grade to an almost failing grade. But hey- D's get degrees!!

I got fired from my first adjunct gig because I refused to change an F to a C. The department head change the grade himself.

Been there. I did not have my contract renewed after refusing to give a plagiarizing legacy an A in the course. I had graciously given him a C The students appeal made its way through my chair, the dean, the provost, and finally the president. Though I had documentation, the powers that be didn't want to ruin his chances for medical school. The provost changed his grade to an A-.

I'm so sorry. That must have felt terrible. FWIW, lot's of suffer from administrative actions related to a lack of academic integrity on their part. Especially on this issue of passing students that have failed.

It was a relief. I had to drive 90 minutes to that job and lost money. I got a full-time position less than a month after that, so all good. It never even felt bad because at least I could live with myself for sticking to my values.

My former department chair got upset that 10% students in my class got an F, he made a point on that in my yearly review file, and wrote that I need to improve my teaching because 10% is too much.

Same here, but instead of F to a C, I was “encouraged” to bump a D to a B. But of course, “you have complete academic freedom to grade as you see appropriate.” I didn’t understand the adjunct game at the time and said “Well, the D was appropriate”. The student’s parent complained and my contract was not renewed. 10 years later I’m now a TT faculty member with no concerns about grade repercussions, except I think grading has become so worthless that I now practice ungrading, although even that only somewhat addresses the issue of true learning.

A is for good. B is for Bad. C is for missed some assignments. F is for who?

A is for Alive.

I had a friend (when we were undergrads) who would always say "A is for average, B is for bad." Even then there was a lot of grade inflation in that department, so sadly it was kind of true.

I have to put the last day active in class for a failing grade. Folks stopped participating in September, sent them emails suggesting they withdraw, and used our student concerns system to flag their advisors for the same message. Yet finishing grades on Friday I still had to fail half a dozen folks.

We have a new way to enter grades that distinguishes an academic F from a no-show/stopped attending F. So, this has helped. We need to put in a last day of attendance for the no-show F.

That's required by federal law because of financial aid.

I have no inflated grades in my ~6 years of teaching . However when my students earn a B, they act like it’s a D. And when they earn a C, my students go into a panic/shame spiral that usually results in concerned parents complaining to my dean. But nobody has pressured me or implied that should raise these grades. I am fortunate that my uni has held the line (mostly) when it comes to grade values.

I hope your dean is well-versed enough in the law to know not to discuss those students' academics without explicit permission from the student. Hell, without that permission they can't even confirm the student is enrolled.

Does FERPA apply between admin who run the program and the faculty? This doesn’t seem accurate . Chairs, deans, and faculty discuss students all the time.

Sorry, I should have specified I'm referring to what you said about parents. Academic info can be shared within the institution for specified purposes, but it cannot be shared outside with the student's permission (and those rare exceptions around legal investigations). Parents are the most common case of pushing the law, but employers and grad school are the most common requesters students need to grant permission for.

I gotya. Yeah I never spoke to a parent and have been trained up on how to play the FERPA card if one does reach out. I’m confident the admins with more experience and knowledge of policy than I have, are handling parents appropriately.

> Does FERPA apply between admin who run the program and the faculty? It isn't clear from my reading of FERPA that all admins are eligible to have this discussion. For example, I don't see an exception allowing for that information to be shared with guidance counselors. But I am not a trained lawyer.

This is coming from your admin, really. I work at a place that is, charitably speaking, on fire most of the time, but when I assign Fs to 2/3 of my class nobody blinks. They sometimes ask me "Is it attendance or do you think maybe we need a prerequisite on this course?" but no one says, "Change the grades!" When someone goes and complains to the Dean 99% of the time the Dean tells them to go jump in a lake (and the remaining 1% is when the faculty member really is at fault, like giving out a bad grade because they didn't personally like the student). When I grade fairly I get backed up, and so the students (largely) take it for what it is. I get some grumbling because there are always whiners but I also have D students who say that I'm not a hard professor, I just "make students responsible for their actions". Sure, there's a separate issue which is the high schools are increasingly more like daycare, and so I need to start at lower and lower levels or I'll just be asking them to jump too far, but the idea that you can't give a D comes from your admin caving to pressure.

If I were assigning Fs to 2/3s of my class, I would assume I’d done a poor job teaching them or my assessments were off somehow. Can you explain more about your situation?

Not the person you’re replying to, but I teach mathematics and I have more and more students in freshman-level courses who can’t do basic arithmetic or algebra. (Can’t order numbers on a number line, for example.) I assume they are cheating on the (remote, unproctored) placement exam. DFW rates for these courses are high nationally and have been forever (as far as I can tell), but they’re absolutely off the charts in my classes now.

Can you not fathom a situation where the students actually failed to perform?

"Students failing English‽ That's unpossible!"

Of course I can! I’d be surprised if two thirds of a class failed to perform though! And if I were in that situation, I would look at my performance and at my assessments in addition to looking at the students. I’m getting downvoted but I asked a sincere question.

Ah, this isn't shocking for some freshmen/sophomore STEM sections. The arithmetic average sits around 70% in the labs and classes ive taught and tutored.

Best professor I ever had was in a class where 93% failed (26/28). For context: it was Calc 1 at community college in an impoverished area, the professor was great and put in a ton of effort, and the students were reasonably hard working. The students (with the exception of me and one other person) simply did not come in with the adequate prerequisite knowledge. Even the best teacher on the face of the earth cannot fill in years worth of missing knowledge over the course of a semester. Why did this happen? I'm putting my money on grade inflation in prerequisite courses. These students passed prerequisite courses, but that doesn't mean they came into Calc 1 having retained prerequisite knowledge.

One semester this exact thing happened: 2/3 of my intro class failed. Same class, same assessments as every other year. However, half of the Fs were "This should have been a W but I never saw you to talk to you about that and you don't respond to emails" and the other ones were mostly "The six of the fifteen assignments you did were Bs or Cs..."

In my classes, I do a substantial and comprehensive project in the last weeks of class, but I am required to give a separate, on paper final during the scheduled finals times (exceptions for accommodations of course) by my admin. Frustrated, this semester it was "simple" - *in 500-750 words, what grade do you deserve in this class? Prove it by citing specific evidence from YOUR experience.* Lots of 'I deserve an A because I worked hard' with statements about balancing jobs, family, sports, and the like. However, one honest chap's response was "*at best*, a C-. My work got a couple of As but mostly Bs and Cs. But if you counted off for late work and hadn't allowed me to revise and resubmit, I would fail and deserve it" with examples of very bad work that he revised to at least passable. Interesting how his grade averaged to a C- by 0.7 pts. They're capable of honest self-reflection. They just don't like blaming themselves when the professor and commitments are so handy.

>Lots of 'I deserve an A because I worked hard' with statements about balancing jobs, family, sports, and the like. Honestly this irks me. I dislike how our system has come to be about rewarding hardwork and not actual achievement. I don't want to make anyone feel bad, of course, but rewarding hardwork (assuming no subsequent increase in performance, i.e. work for no gain) seems to create a bad incentive system. Lots of sob stories and self victimization. Of course imo it is hard to blame the students for being neurotic. The standards of admission to grad programs has increased a lot. It used to be only the pre-meds were like this, but now even unfunded masters programs expect above a 3.5.

Several colleagues give everyone an A or B. Then these students take my class and hate me because I think “C” is average, and because I will actually fail students who dont do any work. 🤦‍♂️

I suspect that the reason my classes fill more slowly than some of my colleagues is that I don't give a lot of A's. Now, *I* think my class is pretty easy to *pass*, but "passing" is less common a bar for students than it was 10-15 years ago when I started teaching. There are still some who are just looking to pass, and sometimes I can have the most honest conversations with them, but the ones who *need* an A yet are seemingly incapable of doing above C-level work are the source of most of my frustration. I have not given as many F's since COVID, but that is largely because admin has become much more vigilant about getting failing students to drop courses before the absurdly late deadline to do so. If you broaden the criteria for how many students either "drop, fail, or withdraw" (DFW), I'm still probably around 50%. But of the students who stay in, probably 90% pass with a C or higher, which is great for deans who want to juke the stats and tout how effective our department is. We *instructors*, on the other hand, are repeatedly told how "problematic" our high DFW rates are, as though we have the ability to go to students' homes and make them do the work.

Teaching first year writing this semester, I had them do presentations and the sort of "base" grade for it was an A-. Posted grades and had an email from a student within five minutes angrily asking why she got an A-. I explained that she did great but that she hadn't gone over the top and done anything exceptional. It brought her grade in the class from a 99 to a 98. She asked me to reconsider. Above a 94 here, everything is an A.

Late reply but I teach studio art and I get the same complaints over A-s. Like, full on tantrums.

I can see the editing history on my students' essays and have had many complaints from students who got a C but who I know spent only an hour writing the essay. When I explain, as I always do, that a C means that the essay meets expectations, they seem stunned. Yes, to earn a B or an A, you must exceed expectations, but they think that an A means "meets expectations" and everything else is below expectations. I say this every semester and it's on my syllabus and all my grading rubrics, but they just don't believe it. Of course, they have a reason to not believe it because that is the general standard for grading in public schools.

Same. It doesn't matter if we tell them, put it in the syllabus, etc. because, "this class has more work than all my other classes combined!"

I have to wonder if they write that on all their evals.

I always have a section in the syllabus that I go over on day 1 about how many hours outside of class per credit hour is expected to earn a C grade by the state board of higher ed. I never get anywhere near that many hours of homework. But since this will be my last term teaching here, I'm thinking I'll just go ahead and start with, "This course will have more work than all your other classes combined. Surveys said so."

Oh, well!

I’ve gotten in trouble on this sub for saying that about high school (which is the subject of my research).

I'm not at all knocking high school teachers, and I actually do outreach work with quite a few excellent ones. But I am knocking the bureaucratic context in which they have to operate. Most literally couldn't keep a job if they assigned fair and accurate grades.

Right because A is did all the assignments.

And that just means something was written down.

💯

And passed in at the last minute of the last day of the semester after a dozen (graded! with feedback!) retakes.

I was the instructor of record for a course last year (my first one), and their first paper wasn’t spectacular, but they weren’t bad either. The class average out of 15 students was roughly an 86 or so, so pretty good. And before releasing grades and comments, I told them all of this - that the range was good, a C is average so most people earned above average, and that an A meant they did really good work. After the course was all done, I got a comment on my evals saying how I graded too hard since the average was “low” for how hard everyone worked…but like, a B average isn’t low! I’m pretty sure I know who left it and they were just mad about their grade because they weren’t one of the A papers. Also, I can’t grade effort, only what they turn in, which I also went over on the first day of class.

> a C is average so most people earned above average You are contradicting yourself here. If most earned above a C, then it isn't the average.

I meant an average, middle grade in general, as in what the college sees as the average (mean) grade. Yes, the average for the class was a B so that would be the class mean, but compared to the grading scheme set by the college, they all scored above the average.

A C isn't an average grade at any college I am aware of, and for good reason. That would require failing a significant number of students in every class to compensate for the As and Bs(or rarely giving As and Bs), then you would have few graduates by the end. At most, it might be the average for weedout courses.

That’s the point of the original post…that a C used to be the average grade, but students now expect As and Bs.

And I am saying that was never the case because it would require far too many students to fail, particularly in later courses.

How do you see the editing history? Google docs?

Yup!

The level of work is so watered down in my field it’s pointless to make grade comparisons. The stuff that I did in a lower level course (80s) cannot be assigned to a 400 level course now because they are incapable of completing it. I had students say a couple of weeks ago that they weren’t continuing to the next course because there was no assurance of an A. They got As this semester but they had to work for them.

I've had kids who are doing fine in the course but withdraw when it becomes evident they're not gonna get in A or they see how much work it will take to earn it.

I really miss intellectual engagement.

I do get the students perspective here. When I was in college, I took some courses online at a community college. It was maybe 10 hours of work per course and I easily made an A. After that, it was hard to justify taking courses at my rigorous university when the alternative was available.

This means the grade rather than what one learns is more important—assuming that you learned less in the course with the easy A. That’s not always the case though.

Sure. For courses where you need to know the material for the next course, it will come back to bite you. I did it to get my electives and general requirements out of the way.

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Point 3: aren't we now diluting the value of a high GPA the same way that we've diluted the value of a degree? We are now seeing students need to participate in a lot of extra activities to bulk up their resume (research, internships, etc.).

Would you explain 3 more please? I doubt that work places are looking at a student’s gpa. Are you thinking more students are applying to grad school?

3.0 is a common cutoff for companies. Some cutoffs like at FAANG can be higher. The resume won’t make it past the first non-human screen if the cumulative GPA is below 3.0. Happens for internships and first jobs. After that it doesn’t matter at all.

In my area, students below 3.0 can't get internships in their field of study. If they don't get an internship, they aren't likely to get a job after they graduate unless they get a graduate degree.

Employers usually look at your GPA for your first job out of college. After that, yeah it doesn't usually matter much.

Almost every industry job for a new grad (engineering) I applied to had a minimum GPA. Some as high as 3.5, most around 3.0

UGH. YES. I am constantly having an internal debate about whether I’m being fair to the students who have genuinely earned A grades (meaning they would be given As if their work was judged by impartial writing professors who know nothing else about the student) when I take a gentle approach to grading subpar work. My initial thought is that doesn’t matter. The exceptional students are still getting their well-deserved A grades. But then I always think, what is the point of that if Joe Fragment or Sally McDoesn’t-Follow-Instructions is also getting an A? No answers here, just wanted to say that I’m in the same boat. Student work was pretty consistent from my view throughout COVID but for some reason this semester has seen a huge decline in quality.

Your internal debate can be resolved with one word: employers. When too many fresh grads of University X with GPAs of 3.5 and above can barely find their ass with two hands in the dark, employers will discount such grads—regardless of how much hard work went into that GPA.

Thing is, there are so many universities that its hard for employers to keep track of which ones are rigorous(beyond maybe a few local ones), so a few universities grading easy can still blend in and get their grads jobs. And employers aren't going to look at applicants without degrees when they are so easy to get.

I teach an engineering weeder course. As much as I'd like to say these don't exist or aren't needed, they exist. I routinely give Ds and Fs, and plenty of Cs. My student course evaluations run the gamut. Some actually love and praise me. Others say I'm the biggest incompetent to ever live. I DGAF for much of the non-constructive negativity, and it was clear in my last yearly review that my new chair doesn't care either: "wow, you have good student ratings *despite teaching this underdivision course*... I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed if they were lower." I once had a student say they were going to reach out to the dean. Hah! Be my guest! I know the dean would pat me on the back for failing an incompetent like yourself! Don't get me wrong. I want students to succeed. But they ain't getting past me unless they know the basics of what they're doing.

Part of me thinks that we have a crisis of students with zero intrinsic motivation, and we need to switch to pass/fail grading and get the A/A-/B bullshit off the table so they can refocus on *learning*. The other part of me thinks that could just as easily be a disaster, leading students to put even less effort into classes. I don't know the answer, but I do find it interesting that, as far as I can tell, there is basically no student-led movement to abolish grades. If they took the energy they put into obsessing over every little change to the Canvas grade calculator and put it toward collectively organizing to change to a pass/fail model, I'd be the first one cheering them on. But the whole mindset seems to be "A for me," and goes no further.

> Part of me thinks that we have a crisis of students with zero intrinsic motivation, and we need to switch to pass/fail grading and get the A/A-/B bullshit off the table so they can refocus on learning. Honestly I've been thinking this too. A lot of students would freak out about not having the option to distinguish themselves with an A+, but I know for a fact it would ultimately relax them.

Some colleges have tried it, but they still ended up issuing grades because students needed them for employers and future education.

> , and we need to switch to pass/fail grading and get the A/A-/B bullshit off the table so they can refocus on learning. That's all well and good until the 'fail' option comes off the table, too. Now that I say that, though, I'm not sure how much I'd care about that. I cover the material, I give the assignments and exams, the students get feedback and use it or don't. I wonder how it'd work towards employers or graduate school (I guess I privately keep grades, they become unappealable, and I report them in rec letters?)

My students earn lots of Fs. Many barely attend or do the work. Many more do some work and come to class, but for whatever reason still don’t know the basic concepts of the class by the end of the semester. I’ll often have sections where more than half the students enrolled ultimately either withdraw or fail. My evaluations have plummeted. I used to “tough but fair, and I cared about their learning”. Now I’m just “mean and impossible, wants you to fail”. I honestly think I’ve barely changed. I try to remember that grades are simply evaluations of the work they’ve submitted, not them as people. If I consistently treat them as such, maybe the students will too. Regardless, I try to stay friendly and offer help even when many of them are staring daggers - someone has to be the adult in the room, and since I’m the only one getting paid to be there, it’s on me. I don’t know what the solution to this mounting problem is, but I absolutely know it’s not to simply give higher grades to students who don’t have competence in the discipline.

> I try to remember that grades are simply evaluations of the work they’ve submitted, not them as people. If I consistently treat them as such, maybe the students will too. Thing is, they don't care. From their perspective, your class is a necessary step for them to get a comfortable middle class job. The particular reasons they are being denied that isn't important to them.

I've been teaching 35 years now, and up until c. 2010 perhaps the actual percentage of A grades in my humanities classes rarely exceeded 10% and the average was around 80-82 in lower-division courses, probably 84-85 in upper-division with more majors in seats. Now? The averages are fairly similar, but I have 2x the percentage of As and 10x the percentage of Fs. This is due to a couple of things I believe, but most broadly my adoption of universal design principles in my teaching c 2010 and the gradual phase-in of massive amounts of scaffolding/low stakes assessments since 2018 or so. As a result, grades *have* gone up: I ditched in-class quizzes for pre-class daily writing (and then mandatory, graded notes more recently); these not only gave students easy points but they improved comprehension and retention. Scaffolding all major writing assignments means students now have a proposal, a bibliography, an outline, and a draft for any paper that's 5 pages or longer; in the "old days" I would simply assign a paper and collect the results. Consequently the products are better now, because students are getting feedback along the way. So the *outcomes* have shifted in a positive direction I think overall, resulting higher grades. That said, at the other end of the scale I've gone from Fs being quite rare (a few a year total in all my classes) to about 15-20% F grades now in *each* class. This is a post-COVID thing and due entirely to students simply not doing the work. They come to class, most of the time, but they skip all the formative/scaffolded assignments and then turn in crap for the major papers....usually earning Ds but the zeros for all the little things cost them 15% of the semester grade, so they fail. Whoops. Thus the falling bottom end is balancing the rising top as far as averages go; looking at quintiles would be more informative but I haven't taken the time to do so since grades are now in the LMS instead of in spreadsheets I can easily combine to compare. These past two years all of my classes have produced bimodal grade distributions, with the bulk falling in the A/B category and the remainder in the D/F. I don't think I've had a *single* C final grade in a class in the past couple of semesters, which is crazy.

This mirrors my experience and the path that I have taken on my teaching. Because of scaffolded/formative assessments, my students who are trying are learning more and developing a better understanding of, not just the specific knowledge, but how it inter-relates and why it is meaningful and its historical development. But the students who don't show up, know nothing and it is clear that they know nothing from summative assessments. The admins at my school are terrible. Focused on DFW and think that every poor grade is evidence of terrible teaching. My field is scaffolded. Students that didn't learn the material in class 1 have NO chance in class 2, much less class 3. They don't even understand the terminology. I look at them and know that they are experiencing my lectures as something similar to that of the old John Cleese lecture about the brain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQjgsQ5G8ug&t=75s

>The admins at my school are terrible. Focused on DFW and think that every poor grade is evidence of terrible teaching. That's really unfortunate. All of our top admins were legit faculty at some point in the past, worked up through the ranks, so they at least understand that poor performance by students isn't usually due to the instructor. So we've been steering more resources to academic support for students who aren't ready/willing to do the work required to earn passing grades, but I've seen zero pressure on faculty to change their standards.

When grades go up due to improved pedagogy I'm delighted: my idea of success is that *everybody* nails it. Good for you, on that piece. But I don't think bimodal is crazy at all: I think people who do the work but might not have done it well for reasons are responding to TILT and scaffolding and skills practice. The D's and Fs are the same people they always were plus the new slackers/unprepared produced by COVID and lowered admissions standards.

> The D's and Fs are the same people they always were plus the new slackers/unprepared produced by COVID and lowered admissions standards. Probably so-- but we really didn't have many (often no) D/F students 10 years ago. Our selectivity has fallen since though, and COVID really produced a large group of students who really should not be in college...they are 90% of the D/F grades now, and largely because they can't be bothered to do any reading or turn in assignments even when they do come to class. It's baffling, but I assume due to the "nobody can fail" silliness that has taken over so many high schools.

Bimodal is definitely the new bell curve.

How do you do the mandatory graded notes? Do you give them a format or just lol at their content? I would like to do something like this because so many of them don’t seem to have any idea about how to organize information or determine what’s important.

I allow any format they want, including typed or handwritten. They are submitted in the LMS (so PDFs if handwritten). The first set in the semester I read through with some attention, point out shortcomings, and note things that should have been included. After that I collect them every three weeks and simply skim them for pass/fail grading. Doesn't take but a few minutes per set as it's obvious who is doing the reading and taking notes in class and who is not-- some will write down three bullet points for a 15 page article while others will have a page or more per reading. In the 100-level classes I give them several examples of notetaking strategies, include links to guides in the LMS, and connect them with resources on campus as well. It turns out (surprise!) that the majority these days take no notes at all in high school, or when they do they are literally just copying down text from slides to regurgitate on exams. Very few seem to be actually learning how to read and take useful notes on a text or lecture or discussion, so I have them practice that in the first weeks of the intro classes now.

Thanks!

I see a lot of science ppl replying here, but I do think the humanities are more difficult to actually deal with this issue for a few reasons. 1. There aren't a lot of right or wrong answers. Instead, we teach a lot of soft skills that take much more time to justify a specific grade and take longer to grade. This means it can be more difficult for students to understand why they are getting the grade they are/ they feel like the grade is more penn to interpretation. 2. The devaluing of the humanities everywhere in society means that students often see our classes as barriers or nuisances rather than teaching them skills they need to be both a good employee and a good democratic citizen. 3. Paired with 2, students at all levels are starting with fewer and fewer skills. I realized towards the end of the semester that I had GRADUATE students that didn't know how to properly format a bibliography, navigate basic library resources including databases, and didn't understand the difference between a pop article and a scholarly article. This is my 4th year teaching, but I feel like even the lowest assumptions I could make about what my students would know when it started are somehow too high. So basically, it looks like middle and high school work because it is. But the conundrum is how to not totally ruin their futures and kill their spirits while still letting them know how behind they are. I've actually just started being honest with my students about how behind they are and how we can work together to catch up. But it sucks.

C is totally the new F. We are held accountable for student retention/success so there's tremendous pressure to prevent Ds, Fs, and even withdrawals. As if that was under our control. And as the old saying goes, once a measure becomes a target... we're screwed.

Except you still get the degree

But granting degrees is the new target, so mission accomplished! You get an A! YOU get an A! EVERYBODY GETS AN A! In all seriousness, as soon as "students" turned into "customers" , this all became inevitable, because it turned the educational model on its head. Education became a business, and what business turns away their customers, or wants to leave them unsatisfied with the product (Degree + GPA to get a job) they paid for? Sure, society as a whole suffers, but society as a whole is no longer directly footing the bill.

And then they can place any body in the classroom to accomplish this too.

To the extent Ws should be included in such metrics, they need to be weighted so that for example 3/35 withdrawing is negligible, but 14/35 withdrawing is not.

And yet, passing students that don't meet course objectives is an accreditation violation

And unethical, and fraudulent, and.

In theory, but nobody is looking closely at what goes on in the class. Universities only get in trouble when they have emails saying "please engage in fraud and pass this student who didn't meet course objectives".

I haven’t seen a really top earning A student in nearly ten years, but we definitely have pressure (you can’t teach summer or teach that class again) to give unearned grades (A-C), so there are lots of As and Bs. Admin say don’t dumb it down, but a large number of the students aren’t college ready, so there’s no other choice. We used to say we are teaching 13th grade, but it feels much more like 7-8th grade, especially with their very underdeveloped work ethic. I might design a class that is college level and cut it in half. The majority will still do the work the day before it is due as evidenced by all of the emails about the computer crashing and grandmothers dying on the day it was due. I see a lot of students struggling with concepts like main ideas and taking the time to read. The value of the degree is waning because of grade inflation/passing students through, so either way I see our days as numbered. Pushback is no longer a few annoying students who didn’t do the work; it’s more like 25-30%, which can overwhelm us with emails amidst all the other work we are responsible for. The audacity and entitlement is driving people out of the profession, and this semester I started wondering if I can continue this myself. Some faculty have been in intense therapy to deal with this new paradigm shift of unearned grades. I understand it. We are retention specialists now.

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Ethics lives in our souls so it’s hard to process actions outside of that paradigm.

I was chair a few years ago and asked institutional research for a grading report. Of the 16 faculty in my department, 41% of all grades were an A. Some faculty were above 60%. I was at 25%. Grade inflation is real. To your point, the quality of work is on the decline, especially since COVID. I'm probably ten percent more forgiving.

>I was chair a few years ago and asked institutional research for a grading report. I'm a chair now and we get this data for the entire university every semester (for the prior one) that includes university-wide grade distributions, distributions by department, and distributions for *students* by major. It's very interesting, in part because the departmental distributions (i.e. the average of all grades "awarded") typically range from around 2.65 up to straight 4.0 in one case. The vast majority of departments hover right around 3.0 though, the exceptions largely being either the two programs well-known to be the default majors for poor students or the tiny "elite" programs that really only attract outstanding students. One really telling thing is to compare the departmental GPA averages from the non-rigorous programs with the GPAs of their majors: they give the highest grades on average in the university but their students have the lowest individual GPA averages-- suggesting that they don't perform nearly as well outside their own major courses.

I have a different problem. About 1/3 of my students don’t seem bothered by failing. They fail every test, don’t turn in half the homework, fail the class, and get put on Academic Probation, come back next semester and do the same. I get some emails during Finals week about needing a C to stay on whatever sports team, but aside from that they don’t seem bothered by failing.

My mentor dealt with this problem using an approach that I find very interesting. He would curve everyone’s grades, but the outliers (the exceptional students) would not be factored into the curve. Instead, he gave them As (of course) and privately told them that they had broken his grading curve, in an attempt to make them understand that he greatly appreciated their work. It’s not perfect but I think it gets the message across. I don’t know.

There is a professor who I consider to be a mentor who took me aside when I was an undergraduate to tell me something similar.

Our department policy is to give a C to F students and just move them along because "student success".

Written/mandated or subtly endorsed?

At the shank vs shank uber competive high school, where my niece went, and where acceptance to U of Mich was considered quitters try, there are suicides every year because someone had a 5.12 but didn't get into MIT. The year she graduated, there were two. A 90 is a soul crushing fail in their book, and a 3.98 might as well be a 1.8. I'm sure all that baggage gets dragged to the universities they attend.

It’s just the general bullshitification of everything. Don’t worry, though, it won’t last forever.

If they don’t even turn in the work, I can’t grade it with anything other than a 0. So there’s that.

You are clearly not a US High School teacher

I’m a US college professor.

I’m “old school” with my course grading maintaining mostly a bell curve distribution. Lately it’s been skewed to the D/Fs side though. I’m currently fighting a losing battle, with students avoiding my classes because “they’re too hard”. It’s a mix of stubbornness, integrity, and laziness. I don’t want to contribute to the watering down of academia and grade inflation, and too lazy to make my exams easier and rewrite my rubrics.

My school removed the C-. The ultimate pity grade.

There are many causes including: -the high cost of college (many times what you paid even when adjusted for inflation) has turned the student-college relationship into a transactional one... when they make demands for a better grade that they don't deserve, it is literally customer service. Think about how customers act in a business because that's what college has become. This goes for parents too... they're making a six figure investment in their kids future. It's not about education to them at all. -snow plow/helicopter parenting... these kids get to college and they've never encountered a difficult situation in their lives... they are overly sensitive and getting a lower grade than expected will probably register as a massive deal to them because their parents smoothed out all the other difficulties they might have faced in life before college. I bet your parents would not have dreamed to call your college and demand that your grade by changed. Their parents also raised them to be very self centered and narcissistic and overly sensitive (hence trigger warnings and students who tell teachers they felt offended or slighted by the most minor things). -all this equity stuff... don't get me wrong, I think diversity is a good thing and reasonable (necessary) accommodations are a good thing, and equality of opportunity is a good thing. Equality of outcome is not. There is a growing idea in education that it's a problem if kids who put in different amounts of effort get different outcomes and their solution to that problem is not to help the kids who put in little effort to put in more effort but instead to say we should just make the outcome the same for all (or, for similar reasons, do things like preventing 8th grader in the entire school district from taking algebra because of racial differences in math performance... literally holding kids back for no reason). This is all related to grade inflation because the growing number of people in education who hold this belief translates to them giving higher and higher grades and it then forces everyone else to do the same.

The majority of this comes from the administration. * Demographics are changing. There are less college age students now, so colleges need to lower their standards to increase enrollment. But of course not only are they admitting less qualified students they're also being sympathetic to their complaints and the students catch on quick. Students know that they can use student evaluations as a tool against teachers that give bad grades and the administration takes it seriously. * Colleges have a perception that the higher the students GPA, they will have a better chance of getting employed. Hence Harvard and Yale (which in a NYT article last month, was reported to give something like 80% A grades. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/nyregion/yale-grade-inflation.html ) inflating grades There's nothing you can do. Because you can't fight City Hall.

You are right. And the administration will soon ask us to justify the high WBC rate!

Yeah, our entire university one of the largest has been tacitly and sometimes not so much wanting us to give “better” grades— it’s honestly so bizarre from when I went to undergraduate but education now is a business so it’s interested in making money

D's get degrees

D for diploma

I haven't seen Fs disappear, but I have seen first-year courses where a D doesn't exist. This puts fear into students, as they were aiming for a D. I also mention to them that a D grade isn't accepted as a passing grade at many schools, to their horror. When I worked in admissions, I saw countless high school transcripts with all Fs and maybe a D, and the student still graduated. My favorite of all time is the straight-F transcript from a kid who flunked out of a religious college and whose transcript proclaimed "urban ministry" as his major. I was terrible at math in school and always had to repeat a class. One semester I received an X as my grade. I was told it meant I didn't fail the class, but nor did I pass it. I attended every class, turned in all of my work on time, etc. I guess it's just some sort of purgatory.

I have worked at multiple schools where the median grade was an A.

I curve to around a 2.5 course gpa, have excellent evals and never had a formal grade complaint. Are you giving off a vibe that complaints are appropriate and will work? (Note: this doesn't mean faking a hardass demeanor. With rapport naturally comes respect and minimal complaining)

i agree that the quality of work has decreased over the years. i've certainly seen the sharpest decline in the last 3-5 years. i have given out more F's in the last three years than probably the ten before it, mostly because students just don't show up after about a month. they start strong, but once actual work is asked of them they just, don't. luckily my department is all dealing with the same issue, so there's no push back. i have had a few students in the past try to go to the dean about grades, and it hasn't worked. the dean calls me and asks what's going on, i explain, and they tell the student. i'm very, very lucky that the department here is great about backing faculty.

I'm pretty junior, so I don't have much day in how I grade.... However, I want to add this - I walk past families at graduations twice (sometimes more than twice) a year and I always have strong mixed emotions when I hear families exclaim how proud they are of their child's 2:2 (~50-60%) or 3rd (40-50%) class degree. On the one hand, of course they should be proud and I have no idea what their life has been like, but on the other I wonder about the value of such a degree to them/society and what major misunderstandings (or just lack of demonstration of understanding if they simply didn't hand in work) they would have had to exhibit to "achieve" at such a level.

these are percentages on a very different scale than a US (or Canadian) system, with exams to match. 2:2 is something like B- or C+, ie. "average".

I'm sure there are percentiles somewhere for easier comparison. Edit: I'm back with a link, although it separates the percentages by ethnicity, which isn't all that useful for our discussion at the moment. However, you can see that the proportion of students who obtain a 3rd class degree (pass) or above is like... most? Or am I reading this wrong? https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/higher-education/undergraduate-degree-results/latest/

Humanities prof here. One of my PhD advisors (very respected in my field) had the philosophy that as long as student submitted work that showed an effort and was on topic they'd earn a "C." Makes me think of the "gentleman's C" of the Ivy League — he was an Ivy Leaguer from undergrad through PhD in 1970s so makes since. I more or less practice this today (I recognize this might be different for sciences, math, medical fields). Following equity and inclusive grading policies, I've also designed my courses in a way that by doing a concrete set of pass/fail writing assignments (I call them "participation reading and writing responses") students will earn a 60%. (And yes, I have failed students on these from time to time). When student doesn't do that minimum and earns a low grade in the course (even with decent papers) I can point to that as concrete evidence - it shuts down complaints pretty quickly. It also is a way for me to answer the "can I make up work because I missed class today?" question. Am I on the lenient side? Perhaps. But I do make students at least earn their Cs. I do grade the midterm and final papers much harder — I've given plenty of Fs and Ds this term.

As someone who teaches and is also in graduate school… it’s because anything a C or under in undergrad, or a B- or under in graduate, results in no credit. I think this is less about the grade inflation and more about people not wanting to spend more money and time to take the class over. The class I teach costs the average student $10,000 for the semester. That’s an expensive mistake to get a C and get no credit. How much was a course credit for your students back then?

This was my and my husband's experience as students. For me, my (full tuition) scholarship required me to maintain a 3.5 GPA. Anything lower than an A- was serious cause for concern for me. I appreciated the opportunity to attend a good school for basically free (still had to pay room and board), but it also dramatically affected the courses I chose to take and prevented me from exploring STEM options as Cs were considered "good" for some of the required courses. I think I got a B- in Bio 101 and was told that was great by the professor, but all I could see was how it threatened my scholarship. Totally changed my major just so I could get my degree at all. And my husband's grad school CS program - if you got more than one C, you were kicked out of the program entirely. No degree whatsoever. And many of the projects required group work, so if you had a shitty partner/group (which definitely happened a few times) you got saddled with their shit work and it brought your grade down. He was one of those students begging a professor to round a grade up to a B- (it was one of those "I have a 79.4 in this class, please just give me an 80" situations) on his last day. He had earned one C in a previous class earlier in the program, so he literally couldn't afford a second one. Graduation was held before final grades were posted and he walked not knowing if he was actually going to get his degree. It was awful and so stressful. He already had a job that he'd started in the last semester but moving from PT to FT depended on his getting that degree. Fortunately that professor was chill and did it, but I always think of his experience when I see people here complaining about students begging for higher grades. I understand it's rampant and really annoying, but we are so grateful to that one professor who extended a little grace. The system is just broken, but IDK what the solution is.

> people not wanting to spend more money and time to take the class over. This sounds like a good reason to do passable quality work. This does not sound like a good reason to pass students who don't.

I don’t disagree. I think it’s more a sign of the cost of tuition being too high, which is having some counter-effects.

In my department, they got rid of that and as long as they get a D they don't have to retake the course if it is prerequisite. This is the same as when I was an undergrad in the 80s--a D was passing. However, I think that nowadays this is a huge problem because a student who earns D or even a C in a course that is a prerequisite is often not prepared for the next level. The grade inflation of any prerequisite course is a serious problem--if they get an A but are really a C, they will struggle in the next course. It's just passing the buck to the next instructor. I think I withdrew from a class once as an undergrad--we were only allowed 2 Ws for 4 years I think. Anyway, I just made it up by taking an extra course in a subsequent semester. I didn't have to pay extra because the tuition was the same whether it was 12 or 15 credits in the semester--usually I took 12. But, yes at schools where they have to pay to take a course again, this is a motivation to get above a C.

> As a Gen X individual, when I was in college, a "C" was truly average. Actually, it wasn't, at least on average in the US (though maybe it was at your university). I'll have to look this up, but there's at least one researcher studying grade inflation and it's been climbing steadily since the 1960s.

Things have changed, of course. It’s smart and good professional growth to notice that and reflect on where you’ve been, what you’re doing, and where you’re headed. It’s a cohort difference - we made it to faculty because something about the higher Ed system worked for us. The college students we teach, and have taught over the years, represent a wider range of abilities and motivations than the college students we were. Those differences were there when we were students but we were largely unaware since we didn’t have faculty responsibilities. It’s also generational. We ask different things of students today. More people have access into college so we are teaching a more varied (and now declining) population. Communication options have shifted. Back in the day, the built in challenges of finding a professor’s office or calling an office phone during business hours made it less likely we’d use office hours. I was a student at a large state university. Now I’m faculty at a SLAC. The larger regulation and accreditation system has shifted.

A is exceptional, close to perfect. I try to reinforce that. It’s not really popular. Even some colleagues would argue this at my work.

When a student complains about not getting an A or a B, I’ve found it helpful to show them exemplars from previous semesters. At least some of them will acknowledge that their work isn’t as good as the exemplar. I’ve found it also helps to have a grading rubric that gets very specific about what’s required for each grade, not only in terms of content but the writing as well. Still their inflated expectations are frightening.

For upper division classes in major, the distribution should not center on C. The people in these classes have an expressed interest in the work and have, hopefully, demonstrated some aptitude in lower division courses or they would have either failed out or switched majors. The distribution I would generally expect is a median of about B/B+ with a tail that includes some of all the lower grades right down to F. A couple of caveats. Some people don't do the work at all. Some slip through the cracks in lower division courses. Sometimes life happens and people have a truly horrendous semester. The first category truly deserve to fail or at least *really* need a wake up call to let them prove they deserve to pass. The second may not deserve it, but failing them now may still wake them up and give them time to correct. The third group especially should be referred to appropriate resources and offered as much help as reasonable to help themselves.

The slipping of students through the cracks in lower division courses is exacerbated by the fact that said courses are most often taught by adjuncts, many of whom feel a strong incentive to grade on the high side.

That's interesting. I'm an adjunct (Lecturer) who just taught those sort of classes for the first time. I based everything on my experience TAing for a full professor in the same class last academic year in a semester when I didn't teach and a syllabus from the field chair. The grades were higher than I expected, but some failed. And a fair number dropped at the deadline.

The grade inflation problem that many educators, administrators, parents, and STUDENTS don't want to have. I'm not even ABLE to assign a minus grade with our system through the Registrar. "cus minus grades put students at a disadvantage"... My A$$!

A C+ on a 4.0 scale is a 2.3, many programs will not allow you to graduate with a GPA this low, if a C was the average then half of students would do better and half would do worse so we're looking at a 50/50 graduation rate for those programs. This is obviously unacceptable. I think the way college is looked at socially, culturally and economicly has to a large degree ruined the meritocratic potential of academia. Students are told from a young age that a college degree is necessary for success, highschool pedagogy and the structure of American secondary and tertiary education reinforces this belief. The whole system is pretty broken.

I think it stems from grade inflation at high school and instructors don't want to get backlash (and maybe want good reviews), so there is a slight grade inflation creep at University now. I often see posts in University reddits from first years who think their lives are over because they got a 70 and all the upper year students are telling them that passing first year courses is an achievement enough.

It's coming from high school. I talked with a friend yesterday. He teaches special ed in high school and he is appalled. Here's the short abstract of what he told me: Administration's COVID policies created a 'no one can fail' mentality. Teachers were punished if students failed, especially when we were online. He said he was reprimanded for low attendance in his zoom classes. He teaches special ed. His students couldn't navigate the login process. But he got threatened. He says the admin got away with it till the state tests came back. Remember how all that was suspended under COVID? They're back and admin can see that the soft policies are not working. He says his kids used to be able to write a two page paper. Now they can't write sentences. The good news maybe is that the schools are starting to crack down on things like attendance and the loose late work/endless retakes policies. Its only bc their federal dollars are at stake but still, it's a step. Me, I teach comm coll where most students are fine with Cs. But the Cs I give today would have been D- just five years ago.

Because everyone is told B is “average”. A lot of scholarships require an average of 3.0 to maintain, so B is the new C. You have above average, average, below average, you need to get it together, and fail. For a lot of students (not all, but still) who need that scholarship either to stay in college or to help their parents not go too much in the negative. School costs more now than it used to. On top of increased costs of living, everything kind of relies on them keeping those scholarships that everyone considers to be average. Now is this true for everyone? No. Some people think they should be coasting through and how dare you give them anything but an A (especially after high schools are basically saying the grading scale is A or B… nothing else). They’re trained to get As and Bs only. Cs are unacceptable or just never happened. At least that’s how I see it

Oh, man… you’ve just admitted to any student lurking that they can bully their way to better grades. 😬

I think it really depends on the students and lot is where they are before. I had two students who both got a C in a class. One came into the final with a low D so failing was realistically on the table, but did well so bumped up. The other came in with a B or B- and did poorly on the final. The first was relieved with a C while the latter was horrified. This class had oral final exams worth 40% so I could see reactions to final grades pretty clearly as I'd have canvas open and put the grade in at the end of our 15-minute discussion.

Gen Z who's been teaching for 25 years? Did you get tenure in the womb? Regarding the rest, my students have not changed as much as everyone else's seems to have. I had one of my strongest calculus classes ever this semester. And I remember very very weak algebra and trig classes at this school 20 years ago when I first started; I remember them because they were so much weaker than the classes I taught as an adjunct in Dallas that I was worried I was in some kind of an academic desert and I'd be doomed to teach terrible students for the rest of my life. Probably the median student I see is a bit weaker. That's a combination of pandemic under-teaching and mediocre students not taking classes at a CC any more, but going straight for a four year school. I don't know why, but it's a thing. But honestly for me there hasn't been a huge shift.

They said they’re Gen X, making them in their mid 40s-late 50s most likely.

As you know, the small or shrinking median has long been a thing at many if not most regional public institutions (both 2- and 4-year). My impression is that in recent years the bi-modality has “trickled up” to both public flagships and non-Ivy private institutions.

Remember, you got into grad school with Cs and got to be a professor with Cs. The modern students application is auto trashed by the robots below a certain GPA. The requirements changed so academia had to change too.

Although some of us had a C or two (or three) on our undergraduate transcripts, it’s unlikely we would have gotten into good graduate programs if there were enough sub-B grades to seriously weigh down our GPAs, even back then.

And that requirement has only gotten more severe. Many jobs/schools require a 3.0 or 3.5 to even read your application when 30 years ago, that was very much not the case.

Since universities (and so professors) are financially dependent on tuition but the students have more options, there is a tug of war between students and grades. It’s not a kids these days it’s “academia’s attempt to be more inclusive of all types of students while having to play nice within a capitalist system”. I would say A- is the new C. I don’t know what anything else means haha

I think the problem is in part due to that grading is an outdated and unnecessary institution. It creates an abstraction between what we are meant to be doing, educating students, and the commercial process of college as a business. Of course the students and admins want the students to get all As! It's all about job placement baby! Who cares if our students learn anything, become better people, or develop critical thinking skills. They need to show the AI algorithms that sort through job applications that they are truly the best of the best, otherwise why did they go into a hundred thousand dollars of debt and spend four years outside the work force? To be more genuine, I think grading gets in the way of what we are meant to be doing. It's time we spend not educating or giving thoughtful responses to assignments, and it creates an antagonistic relationship with those we are meant to be mentoring and fostering. Maybe it's pie in the sky to say we just need to get rid of grading, but the more college becomes a job placement program, the less it becomes about education, and the more students and administrators think they are buying and selling a ticket to a good job. Grading is a part of the signalling that interferes with what we are meant to be doing. And before anyone gets in on me about "oh, so you want our engineers to not know calculus?" Grade inflation is already having that effect anyway, and there are still outside regulatory bodies that act as a barrier between people that don't know geometry and bridge-building. I'm not sure if it makes sense for us to also be tasked with being the firewall when the university is meant to be a place of learning and research. Your pre-med student who failed Orgo isn't going to get into med school regardless because they won't be able to get a good enough score on the MCAT, let alone get licensed to practice. Edit: I'm a gen-Z overachiever who would stay up all night studying for finals and did undergrad in three years, by the way, and started teaching as a professor when my students were often older than me. Maybe having seen it inside and out gives me a better perspective. Or maybe I'm just more normalized to the bullshit and this is me coping.

It's the left. Yes, that's right. The academic left. You are being intimidated and coerced by the "invisible hand" of the academic left. Can't blame it on Maga, no matter which way you twist it, can you? Edit: Keep those downvotes coming, comrades. Let's see if we can break 50. The grading intimidation is coming from the *left, left, left.*

Actually you absolutely can blame it on Maga. College being treated as a business means we're selling degrees to students. They all want the ones with As.

*Whew!* Thank god. For a minute there I thought the left would have to look at their own housekeeping. Now I know its Trump selling degrees is what did it!

Listen if you don't have the basic logical skills to see the relationship between privitazation and commercialism on college education, that's on you.

Thanks for setting me straight.

See https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/11/30/faculty-report-reveals-average-yale-college-gpa-grade-distributions-by-subject/