[skeptikal]

“ The thing that really spins my head about this, is that since you never get concrete feedback on whether you're meeting the goals you need to meet, this system forces you into over-committing to the course.”

I think this is a problem in educaion in the N. America. What are these “goals” that your are potentially “overcommitting” to?

Nothing you produce in undergrad is of any value except to advance your knowledge. The grade isn't the teacher’s payment for good work, its an assessment of how well you’ve mastered the topic.

Seen this way, you know how well you’ve mastered a subject even if you get nothing back.

[aidenn0]

> Nothing you produce in undergrad is of any value except to advance your knowledge.

Tell that to the job recruiters that require a 3.6 minimum GPA and verbally berate someone for wasting their time for handing them a resume with a 3.5 GPA on it.

Okay most recruiters won't verbally berate you[1], but GPA is regularly used to winnow resumes for college graduates.

1: The one time I witnessed this was at a college job fair. To this day it was the most unprofessional public behavior I have witnessed by a recruiter; he had 3 coworkers next to him at the booth and they seemed neither perturbed nor surprised. As long as I have the luxury of choosing who I work for I will not work for that company.

[skeptikal]

Well thats the decay, aint it?

GPA is a great predictor of ones ability to work hard, finish the stated goals, etc. Basically its great at predicting a good busy bee.

But I think its perhaps poor at predicting orthogonal people; people that will create things that weren't envisioned by those who built the thought tracks.

Some thoughts:

1. A company that treats you with disdain for a 3.5 is not a company to work for. 2. GPA inflation is real. In a healthy education system no company could hope to attract only >3.5 GPA hires.