Since the university s distribution of rewards is in the form of pyramid, large numbers of students know that they will not make the cut even if they earn passing grades. Nothing less than the top grade will insure a student of moving onto the next level. I have seen students literally beg for higher grades, imploring me or my colleagues to reconsiders a decision to award less than perfect mark. So there is a Them . Grade pressures are real and all-pervasive.
Grades automate the cheap educational machine.
They allow it to be run by an absentee faculty. They allow the faculty to eliminate students with some semblance of meritocracy from the spoils at the top of the pyramid. Best of all they allow the university to say to a student, You didn t make it. Someone better than you got the opening. Then the bitterness and disappointment of the student turns inward.