Thread by @SwipeWright

I always learned a lot more from my professors who were demanding of their students and didn't give out easy A's. Professors who actually tested your knowledge and mastery of the material instead of your ability to memorize.

I feel that most of my undergraduate professors were pretty rigorous. But in graduate school I was pretty shocked to observe how many graduate student TAs and even professors would give out A's to nearly every student.

The TAs were surprised to learn that I gave out a good amount of B's and some C's, and were absolutely stunned when I revealed that I once gave a student a D+ in a forest ecology lab I taught. Honestly, that student probably deserved an F.

You're not doing students any favors by handing out A's for terrible work. Some students should fail out of college.

If everyone gets A's and graduates, your university is just a pay-to-play degree mill, and the degrees are no longer an honest signal of competence.

I say this as someone who actually flunked out of community college as a business major. I worked for several years, and eventually found a new deep passion for biology that resulted in me having to beg admissions to allow me to enroll in classes again after my dismissal.

Giving me easy A's as a business major would not have helped me. It would not have been a kind gesture. It would have locked me into studying some subject I had no passion for and should have never started in the first place, and it would have been a total waste of money.