system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The GPA grading system does not accurately show differences in knowledge, and should be replaced with an average percentage.

I wanna start off by saying that I do not intend to argue whether grading systems and standardized testing in general is an accurate way to show knowledge and understanding of a topic. This thread will be assuming that the grading system will stand as it is, and we are simply determining the best way to show the information that it provides, accurate or not.

Essentially I believe that the GPA is not specific enough, specifically with reference to individual classes, to represent someones overall knowledge on a subject. To clarify, the gap in knowledge that can exist between different percentiles covered in the same GPA number is too large for the GPA to be accurate. For example, I recently earned a 106&#37; in my computer science course, this gives a GPA number of 4.00. A grade of 93&#37; or higher, will also yield a 4.00 \(A and A\+ give the same GPA number in USA universities\). The reason for my extremely high grade is because I naturally had received a high grade in the class, the class is then curved so that the majority of students with lower grades, get raised up to a higher average. So I originally had a 96&#37;, and the other student originally had an 83&#37;. Now, there is a difference in percentage here of 13&#37;, an obvious difference in understanding of the material, and the GPA number given is the same.

Even without curving in a class, a 93&#37; and an 100&#37; are vastly different understandings, and again yield the same GPA. Even more so, many USA university classes run off a lower grade system, where an A can be an 88&#37; or higher for example, and an A\- is 85&#37;\-87&#37;. This means a student with 100&#37; and a student with 88&#37; receive the game GPA. How is this fair?

My proposal is to show an average percentage for all students instead of GPA. This more accurately shows difference in scores, and covers teacher abuse such as curves. Change my view.
gpt
> Even more so, many USA university classes run off a lower grade system, where an A can be an 88% or higher for example, and an A- is 85%-87%. 

I think this shows where GPAs are superior. Having a certain percentage is not necessarily a sign of excellence or competence in a subject. Different classes might require different percentages to demonstrate competence/excellence. For example, I've had computer science courses with extremely difficult projects and exams. However, it was judged that competence in the course did not require satisfying 90% of the test cases in the project or answering 90% of the exam questions correctly. The evaluators deemed that people who achieve much less then this are competent in the subject matter, i.e. they can be reasonably trusted to use and practice the key principles taught in the class. On the other hand, I've had memorization based courses where 90% of questions needed to be answered correctly to show competence.

In these two courses, having an equal percentage does not reflect equal competence with the subject matter, either due to the nature of the courses or the professors. Therefore, comparing the percentages between these two courses would not adequately be comparing competence, which is what grades are supposed to reflect. To compare competence, we therefore need some shared language that is supposed to represent differing levels of competence, and this is exactly what GPA is supposed to do - an A represents excellence, C represents competence, somewhere lower represents failure, etc. For reasons given above, there cannot be a 1-to-1 tracking between any arbitrary percentage cutoffs and these levels that holds constant across all courses and all professors. That's why it makes sense for the CS course mentioned earlier to require 70% for an A whereas the memorization course requires a 90% for an A. What *would* be incredibly unfair is if a 70% in one course was equivalent to a 70% in the other course, when those two figures show completely different levels of compotence.

In summary, grades are supposed to represent and compare levels of competence across different courses. But levels of competence need not track any arbitrary percentage cutoffs across different courses (due to differing course difficulty and/or differing teaching methods). Therefore, some other system is needed to represented levels of competence. That system is the GPA.