Thursday, July 23, 2009

Pet Peeve: Students Asking Me To Change Their Grade


As I've learned from personal experience and have confirmed with countless anecdotal stories from others, students aren't shy about asking professors to reconsider their grade. When this happens, it usually only produces annoyance for me, but no desire to change their grade.

Yes, I'm sure I'll turn some students off, but I'm not the first person to refer to this generation of college students as the Entitlement Generation. It's gotten so bad that researchers study the phenomenon of students expecting better grades simply because they worked hard. They tend to not realize our job is to reward actual performance, not merely effort.

1 comment:

Brian said...

I've never asked for a grade to be changed (not that I can recall anyway)... but I have asked for an explanation when I have received a grade less than a B or a grade that was far below what I expected.

If the explanation makes sense... i'm usually satisfied.

I often want everything to be perfect and i'm my biggest critic...so I end up being more upset with myself than with the Professor.

But I agree....students today, especially High schoolers and Undergraduates, seem to have a huge sense of entitlement.