They allow it to be operated as a cheap machine. The grading system replaces caring teachers with the equivalent of a mechanical assembly line. It no longer matters whether a student likes what is being taught, likes the teacher, or even cares. Students must ingest prescribed amounts of knowledge at each station in order to pass on to the next station. It s a mass educational conveyor belt that injects large amounts of technical information into people at very little cost, and best of all it can be run by an absentee management.
Grades quickly identify and penalize anyone who rebels or deviates from the system.
There can be no disobedience because the failures are immediately washed out before they infect others. And best of all, the system can be safely entrusted to low-level personnel because the quality of teaching no longer matters. In other words, it s our old friend, the pre-paid food system, transposed to the academic side of the ledger, where quality falls to the lowest acceptable level, and a dull and arrogant management is protected from harm. In effect, grades are the currency paid to students to teach themselves what an absentee faculty neglects to teach. They effectively shift the burden of work onto the student, and best of all, they cost the institution only a few cents in paper work.