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.
Grades also operate as a filter, to rid the institution of excess students.
Quite apart from any value in the education process, grades determine who shall go on to the next level and receive the alpha training and the alpha jobs. 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 .