12-07-2013, 09:44 AM
I remember that Stanford article, I think it was in Time and it showed a graphic of Beavis & Butthead wearing Stanford graduation hats. It spotlighted the practice where you used to be able to drop a class the day of the final and have it disappear from your transcript. Subsequently I believe they changed that rule to where you had to drop it much earlier and/or retake the class to have it disappear.
Unfortunately, many companies nowadays require minimum GPAs and do not differentiate by school. So students are forced to think of the job/learning tradeoff. I liked the old Stanford system, it encouraged you to take risk-- try classes you might have otherwise have avoided without the fear of a bad grade. With our tuition costs, it's not like students were doing this frequently (otherwise it would take 5-6 years to graduate). I would imagine the fear of not getting a 3.5 GPA and a job is causing students to take easier classes and professors to feel guilty giving out Bs. Â
Unfortunately, many companies nowadays require minimum GPAs and do not differentiate by school. So students are forced to think of the job/learning tradeoff. I liked the old Stanford system, it encouraged you to take risk-- try classes you might have otherwise have avoided without the fear of a bad grade. With our tuition costs, it's not like students were doing this frequently (otherwise it would take 5-6 years to graduate). I would imagine the fear of not getting a 3.5 GPA and a job is causing students to take easier classes and professors to feel guilty giving out Bs. Â