Students' Expectations About Their Grades Versus Course Expectations From Them: Will the Mismatch Ensure Quality Education?

Abstract

The paper presents a research study on the reasons for mismatch between students’ grade expectations and the actual grades they were awarded in the “Ethics” course at an engineering education institution in India. The paper also outlines how this event created the social and political stigmas among the authorities to opt for the re-evaluation of students’ answer sheets. After receiving the re-evaluated grade sheet from the re-evaluator, some meager and minor discrepancies were noticed which were liable to question, suspicion, and hence not impeccable. But by overlooking the reasons for trifling discrepancies authorities considered the re-evaluated grade sheet as the final one. In this context, the study examined the reliability and viability of criteria-based grading against norm-based grading model with the plausible impacts of authoritarian intervention in distorting the course instructor’s grade sheet, and its implications on quality retention in higher education. Students’ Expectations About Their Grades vs. Course Expectations From Them: Will the Mismatch Ensure Quality Education?