Abandon the old grade system

Last week, it was announced that UCL is going to change their grade system towards the American model. They are abandoning the first, 2:1 etc. leading Imperial students to ask: is this also going to happen to us? The Union immediately said: we won’t allow that to happen because then this will become a (more) competitive university.

Wow, what an argument. I mean, seriously, we aren’t in kindergarten here, we are at a university with a widely known and appreciated reputation. We are at the forefront of research and all the companies in the world are standing in line to get a hold of our graduates. You think this isn’t competitive? Ask yourself: why am I studying here? It is not (entirely) because you love engineering, science, or medicine. It is because you want to be the best and therefore you study at a university which can give you a degree that states that you are the best. One that shows that you went through four years (or in medicine even more) of hell, of sweat and tears, of the problem sheets and course works, only to get a degree on which it says “Imperial College London”. That is why you study here.

Don’t tell me that employers will be confused and won’t appreciate your degree. Because a) you still come from Imperial College and that doesn’t change a bit, and b) in the new system, employers can more easily determine your worth. Let me put it like this, how do employers differentiate between a “good” and a “bad” first? A first is the highest degree you can get here. It states that you are one of the best in your subject. But if over 60% of graduates get a grade that high (or almost that high), how can you tell who really is the best? These are things that employers want to know. I think that if you ask Shell, McKinsey, or BCG what they think of the idea of making the university more competitive, whilst introducing a grade systems that allows them to differentiate between students, they would be all for it. Don’t insult the intelligence of these companies by saying they wouldn’t understand another grade system (which, by the way, is already used in the US, a country not unimportant in the job market).

Be honest, you don’t want the grade system changed because you think it will mean that your grades will go down. You think that you are too mediocre to stand out from the crowd in the new system. If you admit that there is a discrepancy between the grades that you get and your actual “quality”, then yes, you can complain about this being fixed, but you can’t seriously blame the university for fixing it. The only person that is to blame is you, because you don’t study hard enough to merit a “real” first.

So please, let’s face reality: there is no real point in arguing for the old system, because we are already a very competitive university and companies will appreciate this move. It introduces better differentiation and more honesty, and if we are objective and rational, that’s what all of us want. The new system won’t be perfect, but the fact that it will improve matters should be a good enough reason for introducing it.