A degree from a university that has gotten rid of grades will not be worth much compared to one that hasn't.
> If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A, "they didn't learn anything," said Greene. And "if the student came in and struggled to get a C-plus, they may have learned a lot."
Sorry, Jody Greene, you're out to lunch here. The grade is assigned by the lecturer of a course, as a confirmation that the student knows a thing or two about certain fixed topics. If the student learned about those topics somewhere else before taking the course, they earned that A just as much as someone who learned it in the course.
It is extremely important to intellectual freedom that the time and place where some knowledge or skills were attained is considered immaterial. The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent. I dare say, an attack on Western civilization's intellectual legacy.
> And so if we were to shift our focus on to learning and away from grades, we would be able to tell whether we were graduating people with the skills that we say we're graduating them with."
To "tell whether you are graduating people with skills", you need a test of those skills. That's a grade.
A skill test could actually be a lot harder than earning grades in some disciplines.
For instance, if we expect that computer science graduates ought to be skilled software developers and start testing that, it will be a shitshow.
> If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A, "they didn't learn anything," said Greene. And "if the student came in and struggled to get a C-plus, they may have learned a lot."
Sorry, Jody Greene, you're out to lunch here. The grade is assigned by the lecturer of a course, as a confirmation that the student knows a thing or two about certain fixed topics. If the student learned about those topics somewhere else before taking the course, they earned that A just as much as someone who learned it in the course.
It is extremely important to intellectual freedom that the time and place where some knowledge or skills were attained is considered immaterial. The idea of someone not getting accreditation in a course because they already knew the material beforehand and so didn't learn anything is completely wrongheaded and abhorrent. I dare say, an attack on Western civilization's intellectual legacy.
> And so if we were to shift our focus on to learning and away from grades, we would be able to tell whether we were graduating people with the skills that we say we're graduating them with."
To "tell whether you are graduating people with skills", you need a test of those skills. That's a grade.
A skill test could actually be a lot harder than earning grades in some disciplines.
For instance, if we expect that computer science graduates ought to be skilled software developers and start testing that, it will be a shitshow.