And it penalizes in many ways. Focusing too much on grades can be detrimental in graduate studies, despite graduate admissions focusing on GPA and test scores. I remember seeing 4.0 undergrads really struggle with research in grad school, sometimes to the point of dropping out. Certainly not always the case, but for the ones that did I think it speaks to your point about different skillsets.

Maybe worse was seeing the undergrads who passed on research opportunities out of fear it would distract them from keeping a high GPA.

Curiously, while I had a 2.7 in undergrad. I thrived in the workplace. The initial GPA restricted my options for the first 3-5 years, but I eventually became a Principal Engineer at a FAANG. In hindsight, I wish I had balanced my objectives more - but I also lacked the discipline to do things I didn't want to back then.

The follies of youth and all that :)

  > Really focusing on stretching yourself necessarily means lower grades.

I'm reminded of a saying/trope (whatever) I've seen in reference to surgeons and lawyers (I'm sure it's also been used in TV and movies). But the trope is that someone is looking for an expert and will be talking to a bunch of hotshots (let's say lawyers). They'll be bragging and then asked if they've ever lost a case, to which they proudly declare they have a spotless record. To which the person responds: then you've never taken a single risk.

It's overly dramatic, but I think gets the point across in an easy to understand way. It's exactly why you see the lower grade ones tutor the high grade ones (this even happened in my undergrad and I did physics[0]).

It's because learning happens when struggling. It happens at the edge. This is also a big reason some learn a lot faster than others or even why someone will say they don't understand but understand more than someone who says they do (and who believes it). Because expertise isn't about the high level general ideas, it's about all the little nitty gritty details, the subtle things that dramatically change things. But a big concern I have is that this is a skill to learn in of itself. I think it's not difficult to recognize when this skill is learned (at least if you have) but it's not something that'll be learned if we focus to much on scores. After all, they're just a proxy. Even the institutional prestige is a proxy (and I have an argument why it no longer matters though it did decades ago).

I do wonder if this is in part cause for the rise in enshitification. Similarly if this is why so many are bad at recognizing issues in LLMs and ML models. I'm sure it is but not sure how much this contributes or if it's purely a confounding variable.

[0] when I signed up to be a tutor at my university I got signed off my the toughest math professor. When I took the signature to the department the admin wasn't sure if I was trying to trick her because she immediately called the professor to confirm the signature. Then told me I could tutor whatever I wanted because I was one of two people he had ever signed off on. Admittedly, I'm sure a lot of that was because people were afraid of him (he wasn't mean, but he wouldn't let you be anything less than the best he thought you could be)

This is great feedback - and this is something that's 100% not captured or reflected in "grades". You can want to learn, and you can want the piece of paper. The two are not incompatible but they kinda both have to be done on their own time. Grades more or less call for cheating?

My personal anecdote is a professor who was incomprehensible (complete failure on the teaching side; required class), but meticulous in pointing out all the important equations. I came to the proctored exam with the allowed one sheet of paper with all the "important equations", and solved the problems "expert system style", applying equations in whatever way appeared to solve the puzzles. And got a perfect grade while the rest of the class failed spectacularly. This was all according to the rules and I got the grade I wanted but complete wasted time as to learning.

I wonder if we should take a look at how students, all paying tuition, have vastly unequal outcomes when it comes to job opportunities. Essentially there is a high scarcity of "good jobs" available to all but from the most selective universities.

Essentially when a scarcity increases, there will always be an imperfect heuristic of selection.

I guess this is more of a public policy area but it seems reasonable that anyone working full time should have access to economic security. Essentially cheating on university is the first symptom of lifetime of vastly unequal access to economic security.

It is not possible to differentiate someone who stretched themselves and got a lower grade from someone that got a lower grade for more mundane reasons.

I agree. Ideally you would be able to evaluate the course syllabus, the grade distribution, the quality of teaching, and the student's background and workload. And perhaps other factors as well.

Oddly enough stretching yourself at one tier of education can help you greatly in the next, as long as the grade penalty isn't so high as to prevent you from advancing.