Grades on the Columbia equivalent of the Moodle/Blackboard student portal can and do update instantly as soon as teachers hit submit. This is a recently updated, fairly modern system. However, these are not necessarily the official grades that go on your transcript. In my experience, teachers often never post the (possibly curved) final letter grade on this system. I assume that transcript grade system is a separate portal that teachers have to input the final letter grades into. This system, from the POV of the student, only updates once per day. Teachers put their grades in at 5pm? You get your "grade has been posted email" at like 2 am, and practically speaking get your grade whenever you wake up.

Is that really that big of a deal, though? There would be effectively zero benefit to giving the students their new grades on demand instead of after a batch process. It's not a reason to upgrade the system, it just shows that the system was made when batch jobs were considered acceptable.

I do not miss those days of waking up early in the morning after finals to find those emails. I would nervously read them in hopes of not being disappointed by my grade

My memory of University is that professors are the bottleneck to updating your grades, not the nightly batching system.

Different teachers putting their grades in at different times of the day? Sure.

Why should the computer have to deal with what is obviously a poor policy decision on the part of the teachers and administrators?

Enter the grades when you're working - i.e. during your work day.

Oh .. I know, teachers work way more than they are given credit, and don't make nearly enough for the work they do, given that they're up until 4am doing some paperwork or other in order that a few hundred students get their results .. just playing devils advocate here. This is a 40-year old system, still working. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Seriously though, my personal nerd-ego says that anyone who can keep a system running in emulation over 4 decades deserves a special kind of award for the high status of their accomplishment. This is something few of us are capable of doing these days, alas ..

It doesn't really have anything to do with policy or working odd hours. Unless everyone presses enter at the same time, grades will be input at different times. (I'd love to see administrators trying to corral senior faculty into doing that, though.)

As to whether a system should process grades more than once a day, that's obviously a judgement call that Columbia has made. And as someone who worked in the administration of similar university, a small part of me is cheering on whoever at Columbia has held fast against the demand for up-to-the-minute GPAs.

Actually, so you're saying you think it is all the result of smart policy, and I agree with you now. I see that up-to-the-minute GPA's are a real burden. Funny though, that they all have to hit enter at the same time, didn't realize it was that brilliant. ;)

Grades would change any time an instructor chooses to input new grades. Some exam is graded, homework is turned in.

The vast majority of them wait til the last minute to do it, right at the end of term.