Maybe I am entitled to an A

It’s a time-honoured tradition. As soon as registration season rolls around, questions begin to plague conversations, social media and text threads across the Duke undergraduate student body — what is an easy NS/ALP class? Is there a way to bypass the foreign-language requirement? Which professors hand out free A’s?  How we value the liberal arts education begins to quickly unravel as soon as we look at the Latin honours cut-offs and realise that unless we take filler classes, we have no shot at being named the academic cream of the crop come graduation. 

In my two years at Duke, I have heard many professors lament how undergraduate students strive for a good grade over the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of it, usually saying something along the lines of “an A doesn’t mean what it used to.” In a way, they’re not wrong. It stands to reason that when a grade, high or low, becomes the default, it doesn’t exactly mean much. But it becoming the default isn’t a folly of the students; it is a folly of the way the GPA system is structured in the first place. 

You can’t have a grade below an A even once in your undergraduate career if you want to graduate with a 4.0 — there is no “redeeming oneself.” To get an A is to earn little; to get anything below is to lose it. To that end, our professors are right in saying an A doesn't mean much anymore — probably because it’s no longer designed to be an accomplishment. As the A has simply become the way not to lose one’s GPA points, grade cutoffs for university-level honours have risen year after year, increasing pressure on students to make A’s and on faculty to give them.  Furthermore, taking a small cut in a grade and landing an A- reduces one’s GPA, but working incredibly hard and getting an A+ adds nothing. We are punished for not being the very best in our class and not rewarded when we are. 

But maybe we shouldn’t care about our grades at all. After a certain point, most professional pathways certainly do not. Isn’t the point of coming to a school like Duke, that we want to be the best we can be? Then why must we lean on external metrics, like grades, to feel further validated in our worth? In some ways, that is the point of the Trinity curriculum (and all the work that goes into revamping it) — to challenge us to try new things. So why try to graduate with a 4.0 at all? When a singular measure of academic prowess unites us at this school, we are forced to hold onto it, whether or not it has any objective value. Students may be compelled to take on fewer challenging and/or interesting classes, fearing being outside their comfort zone might spell doom for their academic standing. It is hard to tell students not to care about their GPAs when departmental awards, membership in academic societies and university honours hinge on it. Our grading system defeats the very liberal arts model it claims to stand on.

I don’t mean to portray students as cultural dupes only validated by grades and awards to make sense of their academic achievement. We’re not — we don’t simply want an excellent letter grade. Most of us grew up working incredibly hard to get the grades and accomplishments we did just to get our foot in the door at this university. My entitlement is not rooted in extrinsic markers of achievement, but rather from my hard work earning them. To that end, when I wait a few semesters to take a class with a professor who is a better grader, it is not just because I want a higher grade but also because I want to be in a learning environment where my hard work is valued; where learning is a meaningful, rewarding act; where my professor wants me to succeed. There is little escape — we work towards A’s and feel entitled to them, but it becomes difficult to reconcile with what that A means at all. Do I value it because it is a reward for my hard work, or it because I am terrified of the hit a bad grade will take on my GPA?

Certainly, most people will concede that the GPA system is imperfect. But we should also question the extent of its flawed nature. GPAs and grades don’t just inaccurately represent someone’s academic prowess — maybe they changed their major! Maybe they had a bad semester! Maybe they just took a class in something wildly different from what they’re good at! —  but every department has its own grading policies and each professor has their own curve. With few checks and balances in place, we are at the whim of our departments and professors. The extent of commitment that would yield a high grade in one class won’t cut it in another; irrespective of your motivation to excel, you simply might not be able to get an A. Grades and GPAs don’t often reflect the growth a student has experienced over the course of a class or their academic careers, rewarding never failing instead of rewarding failing and getting back up again.

An A means very different things from one student to the next — when metrics like membership in Phi Beta Kappa or Latin Honors refuse to take into account these differences, we must ask if the grading system at large means anything at all. If we cannot find a strong answer to that, we should ask ourselves if there is merit to doing away with grades as a whole. Be that in defaulting to a pass-fail system or creating a new system altogether that emphasises feedback and individualised learning, breaking away from the GPA system might enable us to finally prioritise erudite for its very sake over arbitrary indicators of it. 

Umang Dhingra is a Trinity junior. Her pieces typically run on alternative Mondays.