Laboring for What?
(Graphic by Kimmie Johansen)
In certain academic departments at Santa Clara University like English, labor-based grading schemes are fairly common. The idea is this: if a student puts in what their instructor considers to be ‘full effort’ and completes the outlined requirements for an assignment, they receive an A. By assessing students’ process rather than the quality of their work, the classroom design aims to remove subjectivity and prejudice from the grading process. Most everyone would agree that promoting equity is a noble goal, although, we should also ask ourselves what this particular solution might be sacrificing.
Labor-based grading has definite merit in certain situations. In a creative writing course, for example, it’s very difficult for an instructor to objectively grade the work of their students. Their own artistic preferences may skew the way they assess poems or other writing. In addition, harsh grades would disincentivize students from taking many artistic risks. Another example is a language course, where wide ranges of prior experience make standard grading difficult to fairly execute.
At Santa Clara University, students appreciate some aspects of labor-based grading. “It allows students to develop individual goals based on their own needs, and creates flexibility,” said Chloe Williams ’28 in an email exchange. The potential downside, however, is recognized by students like Williams. “Moving forward, this could have negative impacts on students’ ability to fully comprehend and apply difficult concepts,” said Williams.
Labor-based grading encourages students to show their effort. As it turns out, it’s possible to display effort without putting much real effort in at all. While we may like to focus on the student who benefits from labor-based grading—the one who thrives under the lack of pressure and freedom for exploration—we should remember to consider the other, probably more likely student: the one who takes the opportunity to produce a large mass of low-quality work.
At the center of labor-based grading there seems to be a belief in honor; a belief that students won’t take advantage of such a design, but will instead use it as a low-risk opportunity to grow as a thinker. Considering the current ubiquity of cheating on college campuses, I find this to be naive. When asked his thoughts about labor-based grading, Evan O’Driscoll ’28 expressed concerns specifically about its practicality in the face of AI. “At a time where students can pass off AI generated work as their own, there would be a lack of motivation for students to take pride in doing their own work and no real reward for doing so,” O’Driscoll said in an email exchange.
It’s true that some instructors who have adopted labor-based grading aren’t only assessing students according to volume, but also looking at the effort that was put into producing a given piece of work. Notice, though, that here we run into the same issue of subjectivity that labor-based grading is purported to remediate. Effort shows up in different ways for different students. It’s not always easy to read an essay and determine how long a student took trying to polish up a certain section.
Moreover, some students may not need to give a lot of effort to a given assignment. Effort should be a means for achieving a high grade, a dial that can be adjusted up and down accordingly depending on the assignment—not the absolute measurement of success. If academic institutions are keen on encouraging hard work and diligence, an easy way to induce effort is to raise standards. Grading effort directly is not always the strongest approach.
So, why can’t humanities classes be graded on an objective scale? It’s true that it’s more difficult to objectively assess an essay than it is to correct a math exam. The latter has universally agreed upon answers, while the former does not. All this means, though, is that we have to shift the grading criteria. The point of writing an essay is to put forth scrupulous argumentation. This is a skill that can be assessed rather objectively by professors who have spent a large part of their lives practicing linguistic evaluation.
The primary tangible, negative effect of a descent into labor-based grading is grade inflation. Eyebrow raising data reports that 60 percent of grades awarded to Harvard University undergraduate students are As, compared to 25 percent two decades ago. This might mean less learning, due to the mentioned weakened incentives, but even regardless of skill attainment, it could mean worse future outcomes.
Unlike traditional grading models, labor-based doesn’t require any distribution of grades, meaning that every student in a class can receive an A. While this could increase graduation rates, and encourage students to stick with education, it could make grades—and even a degree—much less accurate indicators of excellence. Those whose work did not reflect mastery can walk away from a course with a signal that they did; a signal they can put on their resume. Over time, we can imagine employers and graduate schools having a harder time differentiating between exceptional and mediocre students. The information they rely on, then, might become something else, like institutional prestige. The victims will be students who earn As meritocratically, and are indistinguishable—on paper—from those who earn them from meeting a word count, especially those working their tails off at colleges and universities with smaller names.
Other alternatives to traditional grading, like standards-based grading—which offers multiple attempts for students to display mastery in an outlined set of standards—are intriguing options. Beyond grading schemes, students can take advantage of resources here on campus available to them, like the HUB writing center, or their instructors, in order to get the individualized support they need. We must remember that unearned progress doesn’t do anyone any favors, at least in the long run. If meritocracy continues to become less reflected in students’ grades, it will become more difficult to defend the integrity of an undergraduate education.