Should university grades be switched to a pass/fail system for all degrees?

Lots of universities (particularly in creative subjects) will have pass/fail modules, especially in first year. It’s a really good way to encourage students to experiment and try new things with a lower risk

There is no I:I, it's just a I.

I think there is value to it but at the same time, I know first hand what a gulf there is between someone that passes well and someone that, well, passes. Flattening that out in purely academic subjects is problematic for me.

Edit: there is no 2:3, either. It's not part of the second class division, it's just a Third.

Thanks for the clarification, I’ll edit my second post.

What makes it problematic for you just out of interest (assuming that the grade/effort required to pass is increased and doesn’t remain at the usual (unless this isn’t the usual) 40/50% needed to pass if this kind of change were to happen)?

Because there's no accounting at all for any differentiation and if we make the pass rate 60 or 70 then people just won't meet it, and to what end? For healthcare etc it's sensible that there is a hard minimum, because it's people's lives. But for academic stuff people can be better or worse without that pressure and it's not clear to me why anybody would benefit from introducing that sort of pressure.

I wouldn’t make the pass grade boundary 60/70% but that’s a fair point of view.

I personally don’t care if grades have degree classifications or get switched to a simple pass/fail system though (I wouldn’t be bothered by either system) but it’s interesting to hear what people think

It's one thing not caring but it's quite another re the knock-on effect. The issue with grade inflation, especially with the advent on open-book exams etc, probably complicates things. I have complicated views, really. But on the whole I think it would probably be a regressive move.

I mean some degrees are pass/fail. All ordinary degrees for starters, which includes medical (and I believe, dental) degrees. As I understand it, medical degrees (and possibly dental) do facilitate a level of benchmarking by comparing the students in each cohort against each other and ranking them in deciles. Which frankly would probably be a worse experience for the majority of students?

In that manner there is no grade inflation (you're either in the top 10% of the people in your cohort or not; you're either number 139 or 140 or not in the overall ranking) but creates even worse issues around the mental state of students realistically (especially if it then led to jobs only accepting those in e.g. the top 2 deciles or something), and I think would be complicated to introduce in a number of subject areas, practically. Also could lead to sliding standards without any kind of external checks (if there's no external system to ensure minimum if not stringent standards, it could be that functionally everyone on a given degree would effectively be failing or doing very poorly in the current grading system, but by the decile ranking system it would still be that 10% are given top decile and so on and so forth).

Switching to a letter grading system or GPA also doesn't really actually avoid any of the existing issues either, despite some universities considering it. It just resets the standard - the inflation would be inevitable in that system too, over time.

As someone that deals with postgrad applications, it’s a no from me.

Granted not all classifications are equal but along with weighted marks they’re a way to differentiate candidates.

What do you think, should university degrees no longer have a percentage/degree classification attached to them (70% for 1st, 40% for pass, 60% for 2:1 etc) and and that a simple pass/fail system should be introduced? Or do you think that the current grading system is fine?

Is there anything that you’d change about the grades are assessed are university or the way exams are done?

I’m aware of the fact that some university degrees already work like this (as in there’s a pass/fail system as opposed to degree classifications).

I got this thread idea based on another discussion.

Why have pass/fail at all?

Let's face it, people only fail a degree through some pretty major disaster or cheating their way through the language exams and then dinging the course in person. So just give a final % and let the employer decide.

If you use a % then eventually grade inflation has to end, because there are substantial differences between individual performances, and we are unlikely to get a system where only grades of 90-99% are given across the cohort. Though even a grading system across 10 grades is finer discrimination in performance that the current effectively only 3 grades.

if employers care they can still look at entry grade averages and work out whether exit grades are comparable between institutions, on a cohort level.

Yeah I think that there’s already grade inflation under the current system (given how many people get a 2:1 or higher compared to before) but I can see why some might view a simple pass/fail system as a regressive system and how that can lead to more grade inflation.

Is it really grade inflation, or have universities just got better at teaching, and students better at learning? I mean, all the pressure on universities to deliver quality teaching must have had some effect? And all the pressure on students to get through a competitive, high-stakes exam system must have had some effect. If the proportion of grades handed out at the end of that were the same as those handed out 30 or 40 years ago (given that the % boundaries for those grades hasn't changed in that time), then wouldn't that be unexpected?

Yes, I am referring to current, covid and post-covid inflation.

So you think that it should simply be all percentages then? (So no pass/fail system or concept of degree classification or a passing grade) unless I’m misunderstanding here.