College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Angela Aherrera said whenever a professor gives her a C, a score considered average on most scales, she gets upset and goes to talk to the professor.
‘I feel like my input did not equal the output,’ she said.
Interactions like Aherrera’s between students and professors over grades spurred University of California-Irvine research professor Ellen Greenberger to explore trends in students’ feelings of academic entitlement ‘- an attitude she said she has seen repeatedly throughout her career.
Students often believe they deserve better grades than they receive, Greenberger said in an email. Oftentimes, when students receive poor grades, they go to professors and ask, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ she said.
Boston University professors said quite a few of their students come to them, questioning their grades.
BU psychology professor Kathleen Malley-Morrison said she has found that most of her students who ask her to reconsider their grades are the students who score above average.
‘Most of the students who complain to me about their grades are not satisfied with a B,’ she said.
‘If they don’t get all A’s, they [think] will never be able to have the career they want, and their lives will be ruined.”
Psychology professor Richard Ely said he thinks the problem is not of self-entitlement, but rather a ‘better-than-average phenomenon.’
‘More students than would be expected by chance believe they are better than others,’ Ely said. ‘This reflects a degree of self-illusion that is endemic in Western society, but less prevalent elsewhere.’
Greenberger’s study, which appeared last April in ‘The Journal of Youth and Adolescence,’ found that many students think their grades should reflect how much effort they put into their assignments.
Greenberger said this is an issue because there is no way to judge whether students ‘tried hard.’
‘Moreover, effort does not equal accomplishment,’ she said. ‘Would you like to go to a dentist who tried hard in dental school, for that reason got good grades, but didn’t really learn how to fill or extract your tooth?’
Many BU students said the issue they have with their grades is the practice of grade deflation.
‘Especially in the New England area, where we’ve got the Ivy Leagues where grades are inflated, grade deflation at BU is an issue,’ CAS junior Kim Phan said. ‘There is especially a sense of grade deflation in the pre-med department because they don’t want too many students. It’s hard.’
CAS senior Alissa Makarovskaya said she agreed that some professors purposely grade harder to separate the dedicated students from the non-dedicated.
‘ ‘The freshmen year science courses are designed to ‘weed out’ students,’ she said. ‘They should expect complaints from people who are on the lower end of the curve.’
Ely said he thinks students should stop focusing so much on the grade and more on what they can learn from the course.
‘I get concerned when the focus on grades gets in the way of learning, and reduces the excitement that can accompany academic pursuits,’ he said. ‘There is much to be said for learning for learning’s sake.’
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Ely should get a grip… obviously spoken by someone who hasn’t got a clue about what the real world circa 2008 is about. Competition has become a blood sport and it is called survival. You are concerned about the focus on grades getting in the way of learning – and reduces the excitement ….. try the paralytic effect that grade deflation has had on students coupled with the apathy and pomposity of professors who do not work with students to get over hurdles but just whip off bad grades… and only at the end of the semester when it is too late to do anything about it! I would like to see what the retention rates here at BU are.
“I get concerned when the focus on grades gets in the way of learning, and reduces the excitement that can accompany academic pursuits,” he said. “There is much to be said for learning for learning’s sake.”<p/>I hate profs like Ely. Most classes people stress over grades are the insignificant classes. The ones that we are forced to take freshman and soph years to “prepare” us for the more intensive courses later. While about half of these course actually do help us prepare–about half the time– these are the classes students stress out the most. <p/>Students think that if they don’t do well in these courses they will not measure up when it comes to the harder courses later. It doesn’t help that the profs in these classes of 100, 150 and 200+ students rarely attempt to be interesting, exciting or consistent in their teaching. This is reflected in the students to some extent, and ultimately in their grades. But wait, freshman chem is supposed to be easy for a doctor/nurse/engineer right? Well, it’s harder for students who have always gotten A’s all through school to tell their parents and themselves that a B- or C is what they deserve in a “introductory prerequisite course.”
1) If you’re on the lower end of the scale in science courses, you should seriously reconsider whether or not you can handle the courseload.<p/>2) Grades do matter because employers might ask for transcripts and the Ivy League have grade inflation. <p/>3) How can you relax and think only about learning for learning’s sake while knowing that your grade will affect your future? Acceptance into grad school programs, for example, requires a certain GPA.