Are students entitled to a good grade if they work hard?

So researchers at the University of California noticed what they described as an "increasing sense of self entitlement" among their students, who increasingly expect a good, or at least decent grade if they show up to all the classes, do all the assignments, do all the readings, and work hard. The researchers, and many other teachers, see doing those things as the bar for a C, or basic pass, with higher grades going to students that demonstrate exceptional ability.

Many students feel they should at least get a B for all those things. As one student says in the article above, “I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade. What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

For many professors, an A is almost a theoretical, something they would give if the luminaries of their field took their class. I understand that in general the humanities are a difficult field to assign grades in. But I'm going to give my own take on what I think should constitute a good grade.

I think its great when teachers to ask a lot of their students. But if your default grade is always C, I think you need to ask yourself an important question as an educator. Having high expectations for students is well and good. But what expectations do you put on yourself as a teacher? Is higher education really simply a matter of students doing whatever they can, and you judging their efforts with your expert opinion? If that's the case, and you see higher education as simply a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff and the mediocre from the bright, perhaps you could just assign readings, and then give students a norm-referenced test at the end of the year to rank them on a bell curve. That would work about as well. And relieve you of any responsibility for your students education at all.


Or is it possible that you should be taking more responsibility for your students' education on the subject, that you have a responsibility to see to it that what you're teaching is quantifiable, tangible and meaningful, and that you're placing reasonable expectations on students given their existing level?

What you should be aiming for is mastery of whatever material you're teaching. One would hope that you have an idea about what you think is reasonable for them to take away from your lectures after 2 semesters. Lay out those goals for students. If you're teaching statistics, work out precisely what it is that you want students to be able to do by the end of the year. In my own classes, I have a set of expectations for content mastery by the end of the course. I set them based on what I understand to be possible given 28 90-minute meetings, plus an average of 2 1/2 hours of homework/independent study per week. If they meet them, they all get A's. If they don't, they know precisely why...and know precisely what they'll need to do to get an A in the future.

Now, I'm not saying teachers should start giving all students A's for effort. But they should be able to tell students what it takes to get one in clear, obtainable terms. If you consider an "A" to be some kind of ephemeral construct, something that requires some kind of je ne sais quois element that can't merely be described by a checklist of expectations...well, perhaps that says more about your abilities as an educator than it does about your students' senses of self-entitlement. If you can't tell an eager student willing to work what it takes to get an A, consider what it says about you and your ability to teach the course competently, not just what it says about them.