I had a calculus student, begging me to pass him. He'd failed my course, he'd failed the same course twice previously, and if he failed a third time he would never be allowed into the engineering school.
It gives me no pleasure to crush dreams or to fail students, but do you want this guy, say, designing bridges?
Professional engineers have their very own strict certifications, entirely independent of the university, precisely because the university cannot in general be trusted to weed people out.
You in particular may be incorruptible, but if you were untenured and the student had a lawyer I'd bet on him "passing" your class.
The counterargument: If the student can pay cash and wants to take an engineering class why not indulge him? Shall we deny all those without math skill the opportunity to even see, say, robotics, just because we're sure they'll never be qualified to practice it at a pro level? Why is the purpose of calculus class to sort people into silos rather than simply... Teach calculus? And why can't a student of means be allowed to fail the classes of his choice?
One answer is that engineering education is so expensive to deliver, and demand so high, that we can't afford to lavish it on hobbyists. (If you've had the pain of trying to teach a class containing students who are over their heads, you can feel this argument in your bones, because the resource being wasted is your time, for which you are not well compensated.) But... Maybe we can fix that? Productivity-boosting technology has many uses.
It gives me no pleasure to crush dreams or to fail students, but do you want this guy, say, designing bridges?
Realistically it'll be at least 5 years from calculus class until he'll even be the most junior assistant to someone designing a actual bridge and from there probably at least 10 years until he'll be in charge of a bridge design. That's plenty of time of time to catch up. So why not just let him study calculus until he gets good enough to move on? Remove the three fails and you're out rule and the whole problem of students 'needing' to pass that particular course goes away.
If he really doesn't have the necessary talent then he'll never pass all the courses necessary to become an engineer and will never design bridges, but that should be up to him to discover, and if he wants to spend 12 years discovering that then that should very much be his prerogative.
I think you're misunderstanding the Khan Academy model. I saw a video where Sal said that in a traditional model the time it takes to learn something is fixed and the quality of what you learned is variable, whereas in the Khan Academy model the quality of what you learned is fixed and the time you take to learn it is variable.
Essentially, under this model everyone is expected to eventually master the material--so in many ways this is harsher than traditional grading. It would be equivalent to him taking calculus until he got an A--not just taking it until he managed to pass.
In the startups I've been part of, we simply test them, and look at their portfolios (GitHub). They've been pleased to hire competent dropouts, and generally don't emphasize some BS grade. (And once in the company, people get a deeper idea of their skills.)
[Edit: after reading _delirium's correction below, I made a couple small changes. I've got a cold, and I'm afraid I haven't made my point well.]
I'm perfectly fine if students aren't graded (or if grades are a strictly private matter between the student and teacher). Many teachers think so too, so-called "radical" teachers, but of course they unfortunately have bosses... a few teachers get away with it, particularly in more democratic schools where students are more in control, but not enough do.
Personally, I learn all sorts of subjects, and the notion of someone conventionally grading me... would degrade the whole experience.
I haven't seen the first part be true, perhaps outside of startups. Companies like Google and Microsoft definitely look at degrees and GPAs. It's not the only thing taken into account, but whether your GPA is 1.8 or 4.0 will definitely impact your chance of getting an interview. Even more so at more BigCorp engineering places like Lockheed or Aerospace Corp.
In fact that's mostly why the "radical" teachers' bosses force them to give grades; UC Santa Cruz's 1950s-80s experiment in giving narrative evaluations instead of grades was mostly ended because employers demanded grades. If it hadn't been for outside pressure on the administration, mainly from employers and students worried about employment prospects, much of the faculty would've liked to continue the previous approach (though support was less strong among engineers and computer scientists, who for various reasons were more in favor of a letter-grading model, and saw the narrative-evaluation model as too "soft").
Ah excuse me, you're absolutely right — I have a strange blindspot where I think that startups I've been part of are "the software industry". (I have a cold right now, and maybe thinking too foggily to post my views. Thanks for the correction.)
Comments
> Can someone remind me why we still have grades?
I had a calculus student, begging me to pass him. He'd failed my course, he'd failed the same course twice previously, and if he failed a third time he would never be allowed into the engineering school.
It gives me no pleasure to crush dreams or to fail students, but do you want this guy, say, designing bridges?
Professional engineers have their very own strict certifications, entirely independent of the university, precisely because the university cannot in general be trusted to weed people out.
You in particular may be incorruptible, but if you were untenured and the student had a lawyer I'd bet on him "passing" your class.
The counterargument: If the student can pay cash and wants to take an engineering class why not indulge him? Shall we deny all those without math skill the opportunity to even see, say, robotics, just because we're sure they'll never be qualified to practice it at a pro level? Why is the purpose of calculus class to sort people into silos rather than simply... Teach calculus? And why can't a student of means be allowed to fail the classes of his choice?
One answer is that engineering education is so expensive to deliver, and demand so high, that we can't afford to lavish it on hobbyists. (If you've had the pain of trying to teach a class containing students who are over their heads, you can feel this argument in your bones, because the resource being wasted is your time, for which you are not well compensated.) But... Maybe we can fix that? Productivity-boosting technology has many uses.
It gives me no pleasure to crush dreams or to fail students, but do you want this guy, say, designing bridges?
Realistically it'll be at least 5 years from calculus class until he'll even be the most junior assistant to someone designing a actual bridge and from there probably at least 10 years until he'll be in charge of a bridge design. That's plenty of time of time to catch up. So why not just let him study calculus until he gets good enough to move on? Remove the three fails and you're out rule and the whole problem of students 'needing' to pass that particular course goes away.
If he really doesn't have the necessary talent then he'll never pass all the courses necessary to become an engineer and will never design bridges, but that should be up to him to discover, and if he wants to spend 12 years discovering that then that should very much be his prerogative.
I think you're misunderstanding the Khan Academy model. I saw a video where Sal said that in a traditional model the time it takes to learn something is fixed and the quality of what you learned is variable, whereas in the Khan Academy model the quality of what you learned is fixed and the time you take to learn it is variable.
Essentially, under this model everyone is expected to eventually master the material--so in many ways this is harsher than traditional grading. It would be equivalent to him taking calculus until he got an A--not just taking it until he managed to pass.
In the startups I've been part of, we simply test them, and look at their portfolios (GitHub). They've been pleased to hire competent dropouts, and generally don't emphasize some BS grade. (And once in the company, people get a deeper idea of their skills.)
[Edit: after reading _delirium's correction below, I made a couple small changes. I've got a cold, and I'm afraid I haven't made my point well.]
I'm perfectly fine if students aren't graded (or if grades are a strictly private matter between the student and teacher). Many teachers think so too, so-called "radical" teachers, but of course they unfortunately have bosses... a few teachers get away with it, particularly in more democratic schools where students are more in control, but not enough do.
Personally, I learn all sorts of subjects, and the notion of someone conventionally grading me... would degrade the whole experience.
I haven't seen the first part be true, perhaps outside of startups. Companies like Google and Microsoft definitely look at degrees and GPAs. It's not the only thing taken into account, but whether your GPA is 1.8 or 4.0 will definitely impact your chance of getting an interview. Even more so at more BigCorp engineering places like Lockheed or Aerospace Corp.
In fact that's mostly why the "radical" teachers' bosses force them to give grades; UC Santa Cruz's 1950s-80s experiment in giving narrative evaluations instead of grades was mostly ended because employers demanded grades. If it hadn't been for outside pressure on the administration, mainly from employers and students worried about employment prospects, much of the faculty would've liked to continue the previous approach (though support was less strong among engineers and computer scientists, who for various reasons were more in favor of a letter-grading model, and saw the narrative-evaluation model as too "soft").
Ah excuse me, you're absolutely right — I have a strange blindspot where I think that startups I've been part of are "the software industry". (I have a cold right now, and maybe thinking too foggily to post my views. Thanks for the correction.)