Failing grades are not handed out this way, if you demonstrate a basic understanding of the material you pass. But actually getting an HD, the top mark, is only for the top 20% or so from each class.
It means in Australia for a technical subject if you get First Class Honours you can get into a PhD program and get a scholarship and get through in 3 years if you work hard.
You can still educate perfectly fine while making the assignments and tests very difficult. Do students attend schools to get A’s or to get educated?
If that university has a better fount of students then an A at that uni is better than an A at another uni. Don’t worry, institutional reputation is already a thing, so that’s not a problem. Grade inflation means you have no idea how poorly of well someone is because everyone gets a “participation” score.
> Grade inflation means you have no idea how poorly of well someone is because everyone gets a “participation” score.
As I argued above, a high GPA is not a "participation" score, it is an achievement score. It just happens that achievement at top universities is generally high across the board.
And frankly, giving everyone an A is a far more desirable outcome than pitting students against each other in an artificially competitive and high-stress environment where the alternative is group study and collaboration.
Happens at lower universities as well. Turns out the cause isn’t “high achievement” but instead it’s entire generations of students that treat anything lower than an A as a failure and subsequently pressure admin to make the prof back off.
Under 2.0 or 2.2 GPA (depending on your school) and you are on academic probation. If you have an academic scholarship, you must maintain at least a 3.0 (B) average.... Which seems fair.
The true average is somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0.
Generally speaking, students at top universities are intelligent and hard-working. Their talent is not normally distributed, and this is increasingly the case as admissions becomes hyper-competitive. Not to mention, students self-select into courses to which they are most suited and likely to perform well.
If all students in a particular class master the subject matter, why should some students be forced to receive failing grades?
Should the purpose of higher education be to rank students on increasingly marginal criteria or to...educate?