Grade Grubbing: Student Expectations and Academic Assessment.

Abstract

Molesworth et al (2009) argue that the current higher education (HE) market discourse promotes a mode of existence, where students seek to ‘have a degree’ rather than ‘be learners’, knowing how to ‘play’ markets to maximize self-interest, based on experiences in commercial marketplaces (p279). Others (Gose1997; Trout 2000) posit student beliefs that high grades should come as a result of paying for tuition that confirm Delucchi and Smith’s (1997) and Delucci and Korgen’s (2002) concerns that tuition fees underpin good grades. "Grade grubbing" is the phenomenon whereby students seek high grades for minimum effort and is often cited as a symptom of the consumer orientation of contemporary college students (Franz 2010). To investigate student expectations of degree grades in the post 2012 higher tuition fee landscape. To examine what grade-grubbing looks like in UK HE. To assess the extent of grade grubbing 2012-2015