Imagining College Without Grades • Hacker News Board

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#21

Post by markessien » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 6:40 PM UTC

niels_olson wrote: post #15

markessien wrote: post #7

The problem with not having grades is that the students who are best at social interaction will tend to do better than those who are not. Scores need to be objective, not subjective, and scores are necessary to give an impression of a persons ability, when he later applies for a job.

> scores are necessary to give an impression of a person's ability That's what standardized tests, like bar exams and medical licensing exams, are for.

How do you standardize a test of ability in computing? I'm not talking of computer science, but of plain programmers - how do you test their capability in some type of standardized test? It's very difficult.

Medicine is different because it's about a lot of knowledge and being able to product that knowledge when required (same with lawyering). Programming is different in that you look up the information, the body of relevant info often changes, paradigms change constantly. You can't standardize this field (yet).

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#22

Post by akd » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 6:45 PM UTC

rp wrote: post #17

Yale Law School, which is consistently rated as #2 after Harvard, has pass or fail w/no grades. The implication is that getting in is enough to "signal" your "quality" on the market. Compare this all other law schools where students are mercilessly ranked based on a bell curve.

I always thought it was Harvard which was consistently rated #2 after Yale.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#23

Post by paulgb » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 6:48 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #16

paulgb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clever analogy, but it oversimplifies the problem. There is a precise standard unit for height, but it's impossible to create a precise standard unit for knowledge.

Problem: measurements are noisy, biased, and sometimes vague. Solution: stop measuring stuff? Height is a good measurement because it is standardized and objective: I stand on my heels, fully erect, adjacent to a ruler. The marking parallel with the top of my head is my height. What we should be doing is trying to bring grading to a similar level of objectivity and standardization, not throwing it away completely.

I thought that standardization would be the solution, too, until I realized that that would just make it worse. There are whole industries around getting people higher marks on standardized tests like SAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc.

It really depends what role marks play. If they are used exclusively as a guide to the student of how much they are absorbing, then they could be useful because people would have no incentive to game them.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#24

Post by oldgregg » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 7:01 PM UTC

The age-graded system is a dehumanizing legacy of the industrial revolution. It has nothing to do with teaching people how to think but was purposed to shoehorn people into "productive" career paths. "Liberal arts" education today is structurally flawed in such a way that people only receive incoherent bits of information without ever learning to think cohesively.

So you end up going to class and learning to recite Maslow's theory in Psychology, History, Poli Sci-- they just dump information on you without seeing how any of it is inter-related.

I'm just hopeful that the new economic reality will reveal the education system for what is really is-- in most cases-- doing more harm than good.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#25

Post by oldgregg » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 7:12 PM UTC

markessien wrote: post #7

The problem with not having grades is that the students who are best at social interaction will tend to do better than those who are not. Scores need to be objective, not subjective, and scores are necessary to give an impression of a persons ability, when he later applies for a job.

But the real problem here is that we treat everyone the same. Who wants a C- doctor vs. an A+ doctor?! If you really cared about the unique differences in people then one person would take 2 years, and another person would take 6-- but when they finished they would be competent. Unfortunately, treating people like machines by grading them is really just a form of moralism that tries to categorize and rank people. We love to justify our existence by comparing ourselves to others, and "objective standards" provides nice self-validation.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#26

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 7:25 PM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #23

yummyfajitas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem: measurements are noisy, biased, and sometimes vague. Solution: stop measuring stuff? Height is a good measurement because it is standardized and objective: I stand on my heels, fully erect, adjacent to a ruler. The marking parallel with the top of my head is my height. What we should be doing is trying to bring grading to a similar level of objectivity and standardization, not throwing it away completely.

I thought that standardization would be the solution, too, until I realized that that would just make it worse. There are whole industries around getting people higher marks on standardized tests like SAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc. It really depends what role marks play. If they are used exclusively as a guide to the student of how much they are absorbing, then they could be useful because people would have no incentive to ga…

For a sufficiently well designed test, the easiest route to higher marks would be actually understanding the material. The SAT sucks, and is easy to prep for. The only way to prep for the "standard" (1) calculus exam given at most universities is to actually get a basic understanding of the material.

If people are standing on their toes in a height test (perhaps because Princeton Review told them to), the problem is not the use of standardized inches. The problem is that we aren't forcing people to stand on their heels. And even a bad test isn't useless; most people on their toes are shorter than me on my heels, and the bad height test will reflect this.

(1) Even though there is no official inter-university standard calc test, they are pretty much all the same.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#27

Post by Shamiq » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 7:25 PM UTC

chris11 wrote: post #18

mattmcknight wrote: post #3

I think they should at least move away from reporting overall GPA. I know too many people that were taking easy classes or professors to keep their GPA up. No one else benefits from that move. Moving away from grades probably makes sense too. Unfortunately classes are too unique to have simple objective standards and there is no way for anyone to make useful sense of them. The overall goals of grades, to measure stud…

There are some students who are now saying that paying attention to your overall g.p.a. is counter productive. Cal Newport just recommends that students find the best way to learn the material, and focus on grades from tests and homework. In other words, focus on the process and use the short term results for feedback, don't stress about the long term results He wrote a book on doing well in college, and interviewed…

Pardon me, but I'm in an Algorithms class, and I'm seeing "Greedy Strategy" written all over that.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#28

Post by markessien » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 7:55 PM UTC

oldgregg wrote: post #25

markessien wrote: post #7

The problem with not having grades is that the students who are best at social interaction will tend to do better than those who are not. Scores need to be objective, not subjective, and scores are necessary to give an impression of a persons ability, when he later applies for a job.

But the real problem here is that we treat everyone the same. Who wants a C- doctor vs. an A+ doctor?! If you really cared about the unique differences in people then one person would take 2 years, and another person would take 6-- but when they finished they would be competent. Unfortunately, treating people like machines by grading them is really just a form of moralism that tries to categorize and rank people. We…

If a guy took 6 years to learn how to program and another guy took 6 months, the 6 month guy will be more productive when we decide we are going to use a brand new language. People ARE machines - but a lot less reliable and much softer. It's not moralism to want to categorize people, it's efficiency. The process of categorization is weak, but it's better than none at all.

I much prefer that I be ranked on my grades objectively, than I be ranked on something else like 'he attended oxford', because the second is likely due to the wealth and influence of my parents.

When a professor gets to subjectively evaluate a student, who do you think will fare better, the student who speaks like him, also plays golf and whose parents attend the same country club, or the other ghetto dressing slang talking student?

An exam is hard and objective. It speaks the truth, because it's judgment is cold and not affected by any preconceptions.

Excellence should always be as objectively graded as possible, because humans have too many biases.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#29

Post by rp » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 8:08 PM UTC

akd wrote: post #22

rp wrote: post #17

Yale Law School, which is consistently rated as #2 after Harvard, has pass or fail w/no grades. The implication is that getting in is enough to "signal" your "quality" on the market. Compare this all other law schools where students are mercilessly ranked based on a bell curve.

I always thought it was Harvard which was consistently rated #2 after Yale.

You are right; I had it reversed. I will add that Harvard Law is switching to a pass/fail system in 2009.

Re: Imagining College Without Grades

#30

Post by paulgb » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 8:38 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #26

paulgb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that standardization would be the solution, too, until I realized that that would just make it worse. There are whole industries around getting people higher marks on standardized tests like SAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc. It really depends what role marks play. If they are used exclusively as a guide to the student of how much they are absorbing, then they could be useful because people would have no incentive to ga…

For a sufficiently well designed test, the easiest route to higher marks would be actually understanding the material. The SAT sucks, and is easy to prep for. The only way to prep for the "standard" (1) calculus exam given at most universities is to actually get a basic understanding of the material. If people are standing on their toes in a height test (perhaps because Princeton Review told them to), the problem is…

Ok, I agree on that point. As long as the institutions are honest (or dishonest institutions are punished), a test that forces students to stand on their heels is a good solution.