[Avicebron]

What is the strategic response then? Assuming I'm a student and my grades are gone, and I want to graduate, shouldn't I pick pass/fail?

Does a future employer look at pass/fail vs the grade? do they care? Are there even jobs that matter enough to care out there for them?

This seems like, solving the problem but without actually seeing the broader goal or trajectory education is supposed to follow.

[hansvm]

Most jobs I've had didn't care about a transcript in the slightest. It matters for future education and a small selection of jobs, and even them a few pass/fail courses won't cause any issues. It's not great if important, major-specific coursework is pass/fail, but usually you're not allowed to do that, so when it does come up you'll just have somebody ask what absurd situation (like this canvas thing) caused it.

[filoleg]

> Does a future employer look at pass/fail vs the grade?

I don't know for a fact how pass/fail is treated by employers, but there are indeed some that look at your college GPA even 10+ years after you graduated. I suspect they don't care about the specifics of how your overall GPA was derived though, so pass/fail likely doesn't matter (unless you did really well and expected the grade to boost your GPA, and then pass/fail essentially does nothing to the GPA, thus kinda eliminating the GPA boost).

I got asked for my undergrad GPA (I graduated ~10 years ago) more than once over the last year by some finance/quant firms.

As for whether "do those jobs even matter enough," I guess it is more of a personal subjective take. I found the work that the people at those companies did (and the problems they solved) to be very interesting and challenging, I found the people working there to be extremely sharp, smart, and genuinely nice to interact with (which is an ideal work environment for me), and I found the total comp to be great. Honestly, I cannot think of much more to ask from an employer.