I have complained about the U.S. grading system before. I am going to do it again. This time I want to discuss the practice of tying grades to work ethic. Many college professors justify excessive homework loads by saying that they have a responsibility to either teach students a good work ethic, or that the students' grades should reflect their work ethic. I believe that this is a lie.
First, I do not think that grading systems that imply a reflection of proficiency in a subject have any business reflecting anything but proficiency. Grades have nothing to do with work ethic, and those who review grades either for employment decisions or Masters or PhD. programs naturally assume that grades reflect proficiency, not work ethic.
Second, it is impossible to entirely alienate work ethic from grades. The average 12-14 credit semester load has around 20 hours of in-class time per week. Most colleges recommend either 3 hours a week outside of class per credit, or 2 hours a week outside of class per hour in class. My current load is 14 credits with 21 hours of class time. My college recommends 2 hours per hour of class. So, my weekly recommended workload is 63 hours. Given the 40 hour work week, this is full-time work plus 23 hours of overtime. If I can keep up with this and get good grades, without any extra busy work, then I have 1.5 times the work ethic required of the average 40 hour a week worker. Adding additional work to this is not only unnecessary if work ethic is the justification, but it is practically criminal. If I am working a traditional job, as an hourly worker, I cannot be required to work more than 40 hours a week, and if I refuse when asked, I am legally protected from any sort of retribution (they cannot fire me, cut my hours, or even treat me differently from someone who does agree to work overtime). Now, I am not saying that education should be the same. If we cut the "education work week" to 40 hours a week, we would be looking at 6 year degrees instead of 4 year degrees. What I am saying is that getting decent grades already implies a superior work ethic to that required in the work place. As such, work ethic is not a valid justification for excessive busy work in education. I would submit that giving excessive workloads to students is entirely unethical.
I can also imagine some professors would say that their work is not excessive because it is needed for the students to learn the subject well. If this is true, and if the workload required for effective learning is more than the recommended study time, then the class credits should be adjusted to more accurately reflect the workload.
As far as the theory that colleges have a responsibility to teach a good work ethic, I disagree. A college has a responsibility to teach knowledge. The student is paying for the education. The student has the responsibility to have a good work ethic. Students who do not have a good work ethic have no business going to college until they get their acts together. College is not high school. The professors are responsible for providing the means to learn. The students are responsible for actually learning. If the students do not take on this responsibility, it is the fault of the students, not the college or the professors.
I would like to suggest a solution to this. Only assign graded homework that is intended to measure proficiency. Other, non-graded homework may be assigned to improve proficiency, but this homework should not affect the class grade at all. This ungraded homework should either be corrected by the professor or a grader (with feedback), or a solutions guide should be made available, so the students can correct their own work. As it is ungraded, this homework should be entirely optional.
This system has several benefits. The first is that it actually does accurately reflect work ethic in the grade. If a student does not put in the work required to gain the required proficiency, that student will get a poor grade. This is far more effective than excessive busy work, because it also measures initiative and judgment skills. The second is that students who are already proficient do not have to struggle to keep up with a class designed to make them proficient in a subject that they are already proficient in. Wise students could use this system to reduce their overall workload, by interspersing classes they are proficient in with those they are not, to give them more time to become proficient in subjects that they are not already proficient in. Third, the grades will effectively represent proficiency, not work ethic. The only time that work ethic would play a role is if a poor work ethic prevented a student from becoming proficient in the subject, in which case the grade still accurately represents proficiency and only indirectly represents work ethic.
College professors that are required to follow a specific curriculum can improve this situation by adjusting course grades based on the proficiency that students show at the end of the course. I think I have mentioned this before, but my first physics professor had a grading policy where the course grade was either the composite grade of all of the assignments and tests, or just the grade of the final exam, whichever was higher. This system really only works if the final exam is comprehensive, but in those cases, it is one of the most fair grading systems, as it does effectively reflect proficiency. A student who struggles though the first half of a class with only Cs, but then manages to overcome the difficulties, catches up, and gains a very high level of proficiency by the end should not receive a B grade. If we give this student a B grade, then we are basing the grade on the rate at which the student learns, not on whether the student is proficient in the subject when the class ends. This student may have a much better understanding of the subject than a student who got an A, but the grades imply the opposite. Not only is this entirely unfair to the B student, it is also misleading to potential employers and reviewers for post-graduate programs. This problem can be reduced by professors who keep track of proficiency of students, instead of basing everything on letter grades of homework and tests. When the course grade needs to be decided, the professor can then look over the proficiency levels of student and adjust grades to more accurately reflect proficiency.
Ideally, courses would be changed so that the course grades would naturally reflect proficiency accurately. When this cannot be done, I think that college professors have a moral responsibility to adjust course grades to reflect proficiency more accurately. The hoop jumping system that is the U.S. grading system is one of the biggest problems with U.S. education. Colleges and professors need to step up and do everything they can to make sure that grades reflect proficiency, not work ethic, or rate of learning. Trying to alter the workload to reflect work ethic in grades, or to "instill" a better work ethic in students is overkill and is ultimately harmful to students. College is already hard enough that students with a poor work ethic will not make it through, even without extra busy work. Adding extra busy work is only really harmful to the students that already have a good work ethic. Colleges can fix this by implementing policies that discourage unnecessary busy work, encouraging ungraded optional work intended to improve learning, and requiring that only proficiency measuring work be required and graded. Professors can fix this by using good judgment when assigning course grades, instead of just assigning composite grades from coursework without any concern for accurate representation of proficiency. These problems can be fixed, but it is going to require an improved work ethic in our educators and educational institutions more than anyone.
Lord Rybec
