These days it is probably harder for college students to earn an F in a course than it is for them to earn an A. With escalating tuition costs, the modern university now ensures students and parents that their significant financial investment will be met with academic success. As a result, the whole concept of failure has been redefined in the college classroom.
Many universities have built significant academic advising and supportive infrastructures to aid students who are having academic problems. Writing and speech centers have been expanded along with counseling centers and even special testing centers have been created for those who need complete silence and extra time when taking an exam.
Even with this expanded safety net, students remain petrified by the thought of academic failure. Earning a B on a test or heaven forbid an A- instead of an A as a final grade in a class sends them into a tizzy leading to confrontations with their professors about unfair grading practices. Helicopter parents are no better. They are quick to encourage their children to formally protest a grade, and some will call college deans directly to object to what they perceive as an unjust grade.
As early as grammar school, kids are led to believe that grades are the currency of success. They are constantly disappointed to discover that impressive grade point averages don’t guarantee college acceptances, internships, or full-time job offers. Every time they experience an actual rejection, they dig their heels in deeper, believing that just one more A could have made a difference in attending a more prestigious college or attaining a better job.
The “every student is a genius” culture has been gaining momentum for nearly two decades. It began in the early 2000s when baby boomer parents made sure their millennial children received a ribbon or a trophy at every competitive event, even if they came in last place. Today, the success culture at universities drives grade inflation and is preventing students from appreciating that there is as much to learn from experiences of failure as from experiences of success.
The concept of learning through failure is foreign to a generation that tries to impress employers with inflated grades, double majors, and triple minors. Educators have been struggling with this problem for a while now. In a 2012 study by Manu Kapur and Katerine Bielaczyc, “Designing for Productive Failure,” in the Journal of Learning Sciences, the authors explain that more attention should be paid to designing classroom cultural norms and values in which failure is genuinely seen and accepted as part of learning and development.
The only kids on campus who can tolerate and manage failure are student athletes. They recognize that losing is part of competing and that winning requires hours of practice for improvement. Those lessons translate into future success after playing college sports. In a recent study of Ivy League students, student athletes had better career outcomes than their non-athlete classmates.
The concept of old-fashioned grades as a performance measurement of learning is ancient history. It has been destroyed by overprotective parents who demand and are willing to pay for support services to prevent student failure. Unless higher education finds a way to back off and once again give students the freedom to learn from making mistakes, they will simply be producing graduates who lack the qualities required to succeed.
An alarming sign of the dilemma is that companies are not particularly impressed these days with students who have fancy double majors and impressive grade point averages. A 2025 Intelligent study finds that hiring managers are shying away from employing recent college graduates. The study indicates they say these students are entitled, offend easily, lack a strong work ethic, and don’t respond well to feedback.
This dilemma won’t be solved by implementing a new stringent grading system. The result would cause so much student anxiety that the counseling centers would be overrun with emergency appointments.
Unfortunately, it’s the classroom professor who is tasked with addressing the unreasonable student perception of grades. Most of the older professors have no patience for the assignment. However, younger, tenure-track professors who are more dependent on positive student evaluations are more sensitive to the problem. Many are implementing effective new approaches. The efforts of these professors are reducing anxiety and working to better focus students on the value of learning through trial and error.
Higher education is experiencing enormous challenges with the emergence of generative AI, reduced financial support from the federal government, and a shrinking student population. While these issues will get most of the attention, fixing an outdated method of evaluating student performance may be an equally important issue to address. A solution would allow professors to focus more on teaching than dealing with time-consuming grade disputes. More importantly, new evaluation techniques would help students get back to developing the skills they’ll need to succeed after graduation instead of endlessly stressing only about the value of grades.
Bill Bergman has been an instructor of marketing at the University of Richmond Robins School of Business for over 15 years.