Last semester, I took an interesting, enjoyable and insightful history course with a great professor. I wish I had instead taken a different one — a class that I would have found boring and uninformative.
Why?
Because the second option wouldn’t have required any effort. I could have gotten an A without even trying. Instead, I spent a lot of time reading, writing and studying for what turned out to be a lower grade. And since the requirements for my major allow me to choose which course to take, the only difference at the end is my GPA.
Yes. My GPA. That magical number calculated on a four-point scale that all law schools, internships and employers seem to emphasize.
This predicament has me thinking, and asking some big questions. Why am I in college? Is it to gain knowledge and a lifetime love of learning? Or is it simply to get a job?
This leads me to an even bigger question: Can college be for both?
Why is it that Binghamton University incentivizes an easier course load instead of encouraging me to challenge myself? Why are there so many classes where earning a good grade requires minimal effort and no actual learning?
My roommate is in the School of Management, where the drive to get good grades is so strong that it leads to cheating and grade inflation. While he does plenty of busy work, he admits that he generally isn’t actually learning anything. He told me that his goal for his classes is to get A’s on all assignments, even if it means copying the work of others. He knows that employers won’t hire students with less than stellar academic performance. Why does the University encourage this attitude?
Last year I took an economics class that is known to be easy. The homework assignments were all multiple-choice, the weekly quizzes drew questions directly from the previous week’s homework — the TA went over all of it immediately before, too — and the only real test was the final, which was just a compilation of all the homework assignments. It was easy to cheat and cheating was rampant.
And though class attendance wasn’t mandatory and I could have done well in the course by doing a minimal amount of work, I attended class and made sure I walked away with something other than a grade. But many of my friends also did well. And though they didn’t attend class and admittedly didn’t learn anything, the only thing that mattered in the end was the grade. I seemingly wasted my time.
We have a system that pushes us into easier classes, where learning is optional. It’s not surprising that a study cited in a recent article in The New York Times said nearly half of college students “demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and written communications during the first two years of college.”
This is wrong. If we keep heading in this direction, the era of American innovation has come to an end.
But it’s not too late to reverse course. Binghamton has to look no further than its philosophy department to do so. The philosophy classes that I have taken all have a few things in common:
First, they have a discussion aspect, which counts for a significant portion of the grade — you are graded on your ability to cogently analyze and discuss the material.
Second, the tests require a complete and thorough understanding of the concepts, rather than just being “spit back.”
Third, the classes are graded on a curve, which causes them to be competitive. The top 10 percent of the class get in the A range — accordingly, if you’re in the bottom 10 percent, better luck next time.
Philosophy classes require actual effort and critical thinking. If the rest of the classes at Binghamton could be like this, the school would provide a much better education.
But this is not the case, and I’ve come to terms with this. I will never take another upper-level history course, and I am currently taking a class solely because I know I’ll get an A.