This reminds me of the concept of "passing" and "passing with distinction" - why do administrators not appreciate grades as potentially measuring one's actual ability to perform a task or answer a question???
NYT: A Quest to Explain What Grades Really Mean
Here the problem is easy to define: grades are used in a relative sense, not to describe a skill, but to differentiate students from their peers - but if you play at this game you should be curving your grades to a normal distribution - if not, they come to lack meaning completely.
It seems that the brilliant new business model for universities is grades as "you did it!" badges a la facebook games. Universities do not sell education, but they don't sell entertainment either. Their marketing groups sell the prestige of education with the cultural expectation that drunken parties and hookups will happen on the weekend.
By my reckoning, they don't deliver on any account. Instead, they rely on group memories of what is good that are quickly fading.
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