Now more than ever, colleges are becoming super competitive. Students are trying to earn the highest GPA through any means possible. Doing this will help ensure that they land a job, get into a competitive graduate program or maintain the needed minimum GPA to retain a scholarship.
I can attest to this GPA struggle as I have intentions of going to law school after I graduate. There have been countless times when a class that looked interesting or useful to me ended up looking too difficult for me to take. I often wonder if this is what the college experience is really about, cutting my education short just to increase my chances of possibly getting into a good law school.
Some may blame people like me for avoiding hard classes and taking the easy way out. I think that I am just playing the game that is ahead of me. Like others, I would like for the GPA focus to lessen, but there are no signs of it stopping anytime soon.
Instead of blaming students, I think the blame personally lies with the faulty system of GPA. When employers or admissions staff look through a resume, they usually use GPA as a big indicator of academic prowess. This is often not very accurate.
GPA is entirely dependent on the classes that one takes. You could put two theoretically academic equal students into separate schedules and their GPAs could vastly differ. Although GPA can tell you a little bit about someone's academic abilities, there are simply too many other factors that affect it.
Focusing on GPAs also makes students stressed about cramming for exams and getting the highest score, rather than actually understanding and learning the material. It becomes a competitive game instead of an enriching learning process.
Another problem with the emphasis on GPA in academics is that it puts professors in a hole. Many talented professors who teach their classes with extreme rigor are more disliked by their students than professors who may be lousy teachers, but give out As like candy. Websites like MyEdu and RateMyProfessor, tools used by most students to determine which classes to take, are flooded with negative comments about tough professors while easy professors are adored.
I'm not sure what a solution to the GPA problem would look like, but I do think it needs to be talked about. Without the stress of getting a high GPA looming, students' academic experiences would be much better.
