Students who are overly-obsessed with grades at the detriment of a focus on emphasizing improving their learning are responding in a quite natural way to the carrots and sticks that are there for students, such as this high-GPA contingent scholarship. I used to be frustrated with the unrelenting chain of students wanting higher grades on tests. But I now treat it as an opportunity. My students are in my office (great!) and we get to have a meaningful discussion about what the learning objectives for our course are, how to effectively master these objectives and so forth. I feel I've managed to scaffold these conversations in a way that isn't adversarial, but instead is a productive launching point. Many students don't have deep understanding of why questions are formulated the way they are, or what they are meant to be assessing.

So I would say go to your professor. Don't go with an adversarial attitude, but try to take it as an opportunity to learn something and maybe your grade will be improved as well.

That said, your professor may not be help. I don't immediately see a clear rationale for this question. I somewhat suspect the professor doesn't have a clear idea of the mechanism of assessment here, but it really depends on the context of the course. That's fine. Not every question in your university career will be a perfect assessment. This a poker forum, so there is variance here.

This is a fair analysis of a randomly selected student. But given this particular student's approach, I'm less confident that sending him in to "argue" is really going to be productive in any meaningful way.

I agree with the general sense that students are too timid, and that this timidity prevents questions that ought to be asked from being asked. But timidity isn't this particular student's problem. My impression of the student is that he was about ready to go to war with a wikipedia article about significant digits because he wanted to argue over the "mathematical definition of about."

The student was lining up to get embarrassingly shot down because he clearly had no clue what he was getting himself into. I think it would have been bad advice to tell him to go in trying to argue the point.

But this is not saying that he shouldn't go in.

No offense meant but only professional academics could possibly see the university system as a mechanism for improving learning. It is mostly rote memorization and tests of memory. It has very little to do with intelligence or creativity, barring a phD thesis or something of the sort. Not only that, unless you are a professional academic, what you learn in school has very little to do with what job you will obtain with your schooling and what you will be doing at that job.

One does not need university to become educated or erudite. One needs university to obtain a piece of paper in hopes of achieving society's promise of a better paycheck. That promise is becoming increasingly undeliverable with each passing year.

Do not sacrifice your future by treating potential indebtedness any less serious than it is. You are not wrong or irrational; it is the one salient aspect of your concerns.

Build a rapport with your professors, continue to set the standard for yourself at straight As, and fight for every reasonable point you can until you are done. I promise you will look back with regret at every missed opportunity to avoid going into debt that you didnt take.

Nope. That's your failed extrapolation of my statements.

Yes to the bold and yes to the underlined. But neither of these is really about arguing over points, which is what OP was going after. And what has been suggested is *NOT* going to build positive rapport with his professors.

No, this won't show that he is a serious student. Going in to argue about "the mathematical definition of about" using a wikipedia article is *NOT* what a serious student does. And doing this *WILL* make someone stand out poorly. Most professors respond positively to open inquiry, not accusations that tests are wrong because wikipedia says so.

You're free to view education from a purely transactional point of view. There are many students that do that. Those are also often the ones that come in to argue over losing points that they legitimately lost, and often use arguments about "but I'll lose my scholarship!" in order to try to win their case.

In some circumstances, yes. But it's far from clear that this is universally true. This tends to be the outcomes that people in pre-nursing, pre-med, and a lot of engineering tracks tend to go after.

But if you look at other majors (music performance majors and theater majors come to mind in particular), you'll get a very different type of perspective.

This is generally true. The rate at which people change professions strongly indicates that the particular content area that one studies is not going to be directly relevant to what they do for a job. You would want to go to a trade school if you want that type of training.

This is true.

This is increasingly less true. The pendulum probably peaked out in the early 2000s when a college degree was being used as a proxy for a wide range of skills. With the impending retirement of a huge number of tradespeople, a 4-year college degree is going to be losing a lot of its value as people with money will be willing to pay a lot of money for people to do practical things for them. (Not to mention that there's also a general push for increasing minimum wages and considerations of "living wages" that has the potential of changing the underlying employment landscape.)

This is a big promise that you can't keep. There are lots of points that simply aren't worth arguing over. And the sort of person that argues over every lost point tend to be people who don't get promoted because nobody likes those people.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about people looking back at college and wishing that they had spent less energy on their grades and more energy on the opportunity that college could have been for them, especially in terms of their social and personal development.

I'm not saying that grades aren't important, but it's not actually the bottom line or the thing that propels people forward in life. There are many hiring managers that will pass over a 4.0 GPA entry level applicant for someone with a 3.5 GPA but who is a much more well-rounded person and has stronger soft skills.

My best estimation of what you're saying is 'dont get distracted by a single percentage point, university is about learning and it sucks to go in debt but that's not as important as getting bang for your buck from school. Dont approach your teachers unless you absolutely have to.'




So the one opportunity the kid has to show he is creative and thinking outside the box to get what he wants out of life is looked down upon. 'Color inside the lines or you fail.'

Sigh. I see nothing about University has changed since I was there.


That's what it is. I'm not saying you cant get good other benefits from it. You certainly can. But the system of schooling in general is set up to train people to be productive do-what-youre-tolds from cradle to grave.


He shouldnt mention his scholarship at all.

That's a very poor estimation.

Your pessimism about education in general is a strong indicator as to why you are projecting so much into what I'm saying.

I agree.

I agree certain types of learning are at least better facilitated by feedback, but they are certainly not required. For example I learned how to play clsssical guitar to a performance level with only a very few lessons. It also depends on the person involved. Higher raw intelligence needs less guidance. This is ironic. The university system up to almost the highest levels is a guided experience, which holds probably the most gifted back or at least spurns the most gifted from becoming involved.

The last sentence of my quote bears out the fact that we agree on this.



Actually to be honest with you unless someone has a scholarship I wouldn't generally recommend a University education. It's simply not worth the time and effort for the return you get. Youre giving up at minimum 2 years of work experience (with 2 year trade school) and most 4 (with coop) to get a piece of paper for an entry level position that probably shouldnt require one.

Tradespeople make and are making far more money on average than college graduates by a wide margin. Truly gifted people can simply create their own jobs nowadays. However, if you have a scholarship, it would be stupid not to get a university degree which is why I stress so much the importance of retaining it.

Grades are almost unimportant to your future job prospects. On this we agree and that is not the locus of my point. Going into debt for university is absolutely the one thing this guy should avoid, a. Because it's possible to avoid and b. Because it will negatively affect his life beyond all positives he could get from going to university and coming out indebted

That aside, the best part of University (and high school) for me was the social aspect. It's the only place you can pretend to be doing something of adult importance without any of the consequences or repercussions of being totally inexperienced at life. The naivety of it still gives me warm memories.

It's not pessimism, its realism. And it's not directed at education, its directed at the school system in general. Feel free to elaborate your position.

We don't really disagree on any general point here, but I'm less willing to revise my advice from the general case based on the very limited interactions you get in a single forum thread. If I personally knew the OP and that they are unable to speak to people in authority politely (rather than strangers on an online forum-not that OP has been impolite here either), then maybe I'd agree with you, but that conclusion doesn't seem warranted from what I've seen ITT.

Meh. It is the professor's job to answer these kinds of questions. If the student thinks it is embarrassing to lose an argument about whether a test question is clearly framed, oh well. That in itself is probably a useful learning experience in a relatively low-stakes environment.

Don't agree. You should max out subsidized public student loans every year and reinvest them for a greater return and then try to use loan consolidation, IBR or loan forgiveness for partial repayment. Assuming the student can avoid wastreling the money, if not then you're more likely correct.

As an in-state resident of a state university...

Undergrad can be paid for by working for the uni. Schedules are flexible, and usually 6 hours per semester (or whatever the schedules are called now) was a perk. Schedule it all out and plan to finish the last two semesters full time.

This took an additional 2 years, but was debt free and actually a fun time in my life.

Good for you.

I guess I would say that my language usage is probably different from yours. "Learning" is a process. "Education" is a particular type of system in which learning happens.

For example: You "learned" to play the guitar. You were not "educated" about playing the guitar. But if you had gone to school or had taken substantial amounts of musical lessons, then it would be more reasonable to say that you were "educated" in guitar performance (while also being able to say that you "learned" to play the guitar).

Yes. But one can be educated and not have a formal education. This is the sense in which I was using the term. You can be educated in music performance and self-taught. Professors, schools and teachers are just facilitators of information, not the keepers of it, especially in today's world.

It should be noted that this is not an approved use of student loans and could land you into hot water.

Although with today's interest rates is probably financially optimal, if not high risk.

I think you're being somewhat hyperbolic and condescending here. I was simply looking for a more substantial way to state my case other than saying "I feel like this question was worded poorly".

As I've said before, the only reason I feel this way is that this can literally make or break my scholarship. While unlikely, this one percentage point could result in the +/- of ~24k worth of EV not accounting for interest on student loans that would be needed to make up this deficit.

I don't feel as if my feelings are unreasonable, although they probably seem to be blown out of proportion due to the way this thread has went.

Unbelievable failure by all that look down at school. And this comes from someone that wants to take down the house of cards in modern physics embraced by many departments currently but will never dare for a moment fail to appreciate what is offered to learn out there in universities worldwide. Priceless gift to society.

Super galactic catastrophic conclusions.

School in fact even when it is not functioning at its best levels presents the single most important institution that has assisted the progress of human civilization.

Go take a class online in Youtube in endless links i can give you and do the homework i will suggest for you after i personally email you or link you online to free places 10 books on each topic and you will experience amazing progress and understanding because of the structure and guidance.


So are you f@(*&Ing kidding me that school is not the greatest part of human society?

The discipline you have at school to do homework, regularly attend lectures and prepare for exams is exactly what forces you to become good and improve against any laziness and depression caused by temporary lack of clarity and conviction in the power of coherent understanding.

I wish so damn right wish to have the chance to attend high level classes on topics in Quantum mechanics and Black holes and the early universe with endless calculation projects every week. But there is so very little at the top level that is really what is needed to start having endless good ideas.


You have no f@cking idea how great school is when people care to do things right.

I can design for you a program outside school that will teach you probability theory, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, Quantum mechanics, Relativity etc that if you follow every week you will be so happy. All with tools available online free. So imagine what an actual school can do for you.


Here is what a probability theory course preview is like for example;


http://scpd.stanford.edu/search/publ...courseId=12686

watch 1.40h and tell me you didnt learn anything interesting or got motivated to study something if new to probability theory and even if a veteran, just one thing...Because i know i did.

It's certainly possible. As I said, I've got experiences with students doing this type of thing, and I could be extrapolating a bit from those experiences. But the bare wording you use is echoing some of those conversations I've had.

In these two sentences, you hit the exact same markers that I've been indicating:

1) You're still coming at this with the "I'm building a case to criticize the test" mentality. Professors can/will get stubborn if you approach them like that, which lessens the probability that you'll actually get the grade changed.

2) It's about the money to you and not about the learning outcomes. You should be measuring the quality of your case against the learning outcomes of the course, not your desire to keep your scholarship.

Good luck. Despite whatever I might think of your perspective of this specific question, I hope you are successful at attaining your desired final grade for the course.

That older post was all graded wotk competed at that date, naturally there has been more work submitted.

The rubric breaks down to 40% in a final project broken up into three segments (10/10/20) 40% in quizzes with 4 each and 20% in participation/discussion

A 85% in my final portion of my project will yield me a 90.1%


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t really know what else to say about this.

Whether you think it’s noble or not, if I don’t have a scholarship I have an incredibly hard time justifying continuing to go to school.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think this has nothing to do with nobility. If the scholarship disappears changing schools to a cheaper college or dropping out and starting gainful employment are both smart things to do. And for all I know, you might be one of those students that kind of hates the performance game of the education system, and you're just doing it because you feel social pressure to do so (ie, your family and/or peer group is very college-oriented).

This is much more about you figuring out what you want out of your life, and what parts of that are realistically attainable.

This assumes I’m not already going to the most affordable school and that I have gainful employment opportunities with my current skill set and resume


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You might implicitly be assuming that there will suddenly be gainful employment opportunities waiting for you if you added a college degree to your resume. There are lots of people with college degrees working at places like Walmart and Starbucks that didn't need to get a degree to do the thing they're doing.

Surely a college degree can only help improve my statistical odds of getting gainful employment. And so if I can do that without racking up insane debt I will.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk