Twas a Grade Grubbing and Ghosting Holiday: Considerations for Teachers

Admittedly, I only logged into Twitter to vote "Yes" to Elon Musk stepping down. Before I could head to Musk's profile, I saw a tweet from a Penn State University professor, asking instructor friends if we've ever thought of "throwing in the towel" and saying "eff it, everyone is getting an A, I'm done." The sentiment stemmed from her frustration of over 50 "grade grubbing" (begging/threatening/angling for higher grades than what was genuinely earned) emails from students this semester (out of a class of 311); two being from academic counselors. The tweet had over 900 likes, 45 retweets, and 70 comments. Participants in the conversation - other instructors - were sharing their stories of a profession that is much more transactional than ever before. More concerning, many teachers shared they were either at a loss of what to do or, sadly, were considering a career change because they "couldn't take it anymore." My heart went out to all of them. I could relate. 2023 will mark my 13th year of teaching, and I've never before experienced what I did this year. Not only was there more begging for unearned grades, but students were "ghosting" (not showing up for class, not being active in class, or not submitting assignments) more than ever. I've spent most of 2022 helping my own team of 72 adjunct faculty combat these issues, while maintaining the joy in their roles.

That said, I decided to join the conversation, and add a comment to this Twitter thread. I told the Penn State faculty member that I added standardized language to all syllabi to combat some of these major issues, and I'd be happy to help. This was at 10 p.m. By 7 a.m., I had hundreds of DMs from faculty around the world who saw the tweet response and wanted the blurbs, as well as teaching tips, coaching, and other forms of assistance. I was overwhelmed. I wasn't only overwhelmed by the response volume, but by the confirmation that faculty from as far as Australia and India to as close as my own backyard in NYC are struggling with the same issues.

While I've been replying to individual instructors, the outreach from faculty from around the globe inspired this blog post. Over the past three years, the leniency with grading, academic standards, and policy hurt all of us, and it will take some time to reset expectations. This doesn't mean, however, that we wait around for pre-2020 normalcy. We're now living in a new normal. That means we all need to work at regaining the rigor and integrity of higher ed, with 50% of the work being from faculty and the other half being from students. I hope the information helps both parties grow and thrive in higher education.

A's Mean Excellent: A's mean excellent work. By dictionary definition, excellent means "extremely good; outstanding." It's virtually error-free and is nearly perfectly aligned with instructor expectations. In fact, the work was so good that it could be an answer key. Faculty should not make it easy to earn A's. In fact, statistically speaking, A's are earned more often towards the end of a semester than at the beginning, as it's atypical for students to be immediately "excellent" with content they are just learning and applying. Following this rationale, students should never expect A's. A's are earned through absorption of material, careful completion of work, and demonstrated application of required skills. While the pressure students sometimes put on faculty to "get" A's can be overwhelming and - frankly - generate understandable fear of retaliation, faculty need to stand strong for the following reasons:

1. It's unethical to give unearned grades. Proper assessment is imperative to students understanding their true acumen in subject matter. Inflating grades will only yield cognitive dissonance between how the student is actually performing versus how highly they think of themselves mastering the material. In other words, you're doing the student an extreme disservice if you are giving unearned grades, especially if you teach a course that scaffolds to other (harder) content later on.
2. It's unfair to students. Consider this: If you give everyone high grades, how will you distinguish between your highest performers versus those who need more practice? You wouldn't. That means those students who truly earned A's are now in the same bucket as those who aren't performing as well. Thus, in the eyes of the B, C, and below performers, everyone is equal. No one needs more practice than others and everyone is "excellent." This is a dangerous world to live in. Not everyone deserves the designation of excellent and thus, there should be a clear delineation between students who produce excellent work, versus those who are almost excellent (but not quite there yet), versus so-so, versus needs a lot of improvement. Another major point here that faculty don't regularly consider: Students compare work with their classmates. If you have a so-so paper and an excellent paper with the same grade, how are your students ever supposed to learn what you truly need and want out of assignments?
3. Giving unearned grades excuses you from providing specific and meaningful feedback. Rubrics are guides for assessment. The best rubrics are specific enough to ensure you take the correct points off each item you're looking to assess. Simultaneously, it provides a bit of room for flexibility and creativity, too. That said, it's imperative that the feedback provided on each assignment justify the grade. Feedback should align with appropriate areas of the rubric and provide meaningful context as to why that section wasn't perfect (unless it was). Grading, by far, is the hardest part of teaching and there is a reason for that. It takes time, energy, and patience to provide feedback that justifies the score. The more time you take to provide the proper notes, the more credible and accurate the score will be (and thus, there is less for students to argue about).

Grubbing for Grades is Grating: Students grub for many reasons. In fact, the list is seemingly endless. Whether it's because they need to stay on a sports team, or are going through a tough time, or are on academic probation, or simply to maintain an A-average GPA, many students will find a reason to email you for a better final score than rightfully earned. Are these messages intimidating? Yes. Does that mean you should automatically fold? No. Repeat after me: Mathematical mistakes, most of a class getting a question wrong (because you didn't teach that content well), or not providing enough feedback to justify points off are understandable requests for grade changes. No other reason should be considered. In fact, I recommend you take this one step further: Add language to your syllabus that you will not entertain or respond to requests to change grades for no legitimate reason. Here's another step: Give students a timeframe to make these requests per assignment. Provide a deadline for possible end-of-semester grading errors, too. If you made a mistake, own it, and fix it. If you didn't, score accordingly. Students shouldn't be mad about the result of effort that wasn't put in. If education was about participation only, most would get a trophy. We aren't in the business of giving out participation trophies. We're in the business of helping people learn, apply, and go on to greatness.

A note about the tough stuff: While it is difficult to ignore pleas for grade changes because of grieving, mental health issues, legal troubles, parenting challenges or angry parents, it is important you do. All universities have assistance in place for students to proactively work through challenges while continuing their academic journey. Moreso, they are regularly advertised through syllabi, advising services, newsletters, and websites. If students are having trouble continuing school responsibilities while doing life, there are many options available to help. In my own program, outside of formal medical or academic accommodations, we offer Individual Learning Plans for students going through extenuating circumstances that may require extra time to complete assignments/coursework outside of course deadlines. We also offer a "free" non-excused absence and the flexibility to be late for class/leave early a certain number of times throughout the semester. We also ensure students have access to mental health resources in every class through syllabi inclusion. I suggest your school do the same. This way, if a student chooses not to take advantage of the resources available, remain in class, and do poorly, you can feel good that you've provided as much flexibility, empathy, and "life grace" as possible to get them past the finish line before submitting a final grade.

Just Say No to Ghosting: Despite implementing flexible policies, providing easy access to available resources, and demonstrating empathy, one of the toughest things for faculty to understand is how students can still - with no notice or communication - not attend class for weeks, miss assignments, or complete coursework. Through my conversations with students, I learned they "ghost" for a few reasons. First, asking for help is difficult, and not everyone is comfortable doing it. Second, they honestly think it will all be fine, and they'll be able to catch up later on. Third, once they are behind, they feel ashamed and don't know how to get out of the hole (thus, become paralyzed and don't know how to move forward). Honestly, these are all understandable reasons. Understandable, however, doesn't make it right. Professionally, we could never just not show up to work for weeks at a time or miss deadlines without accountability. And higher education is designed to help our students prepare for a future career. We aren't doing students any favors when we let things slide retroactively.

I want to be clear that I say all of this with the omission of emergency situations (a sudden death, medical emergency, etc.). In any emergency situation, the last thing a student should be thinking of should be school, and any and all inactivity should be excused with reasonable (yet flexible) expectations to continue the semester when the student is ready (unless they need to drop). I'm talking about non-emergency, on-going situations where university resources were not used, the student did not proactively communicate, and the faculty are left wondering what happened to the student after multiple attempts to reach them and follow up on missed work. In these cases, students need to be held responsible. I suggest adding a conversation to your first day of class about "ghosting" or adding language to your course site/rubric. This includes explicit language that if a student needs additional time on an assignment or needs to miss class, that they proactively contact you with the request for consideration. In turn, unless it's an emergency situation, retroactive requests for extensions or unexcused absences will not be granted. And explain why: Because you value the integrity of the learning process, which includes active participation, proactive planning, and ensuring you provide timely and meaningful feedback on all assignments. And, that you're unable to do that if students don't ask for help/communicate.

In closing, I'd love to tell you that all of this advice stems from being unaffected by student backlash from not getting exactly what they want 100% of the time. Spoiler: It doesn't. I can't tell you how many times I've cried into my pillow at night over some pretty horrible things done to me for holding the line. I'd be lying if I said I never questioned myself as an effective educator after reading what a "horrible" teacher I am because I graded too "hard" (a.k.a "accurately") and took the "fun" out of learning (a.k.a. I made you work for an A and ensured you got your money's worth). I also readily admit I wish I could obliterate course GroupMe chats that complain about faculty/courses the entire semester and ask each other for "easy" class recommendations. I'm not immune to the difficulties of being an educator, and the weight of the profession is heavy, every day. It would be so easy to give up. Go back to a nine-to-five. Have actual vacations. Heck, even having weekends again would be nice. But I won't give up. Higher education is a calling and I know it's mine. I have a passion and a talent for faculty affairs, and I'm not done yet. I want to continue writing articles like this and training current and future instructors to be and do better.

Final thought: It's more critical than ever to have leaders who listen to classroom woes and actively work to support you. This means moving past the "customer is always right" mentality and critically looking at emails that reach the dean's office to complain about you (it's amazing how creative students can get). It means letting parents be angry and having support from the University to reiterate that they are not paying tuition to buy a degree. It means having difficult conversations with other faculty, so that you can empower each other to do better. It means backing each other up and working together to be stronger assessors of work, so you won't question your job performance when grade grubbing emails come in. It means resetting student expectations from the first day, being crystal clear in your syllabus about grades earned and learner responsibilities. And, most importantly, it means rediscovering your confidence in instruction and remembering why you were hired: Because you have the unique ability to instill knowledge in others.

Stay strong. You've got this. Promise.