Making the Grade: The Academic Side of College LifeBased on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection. With rare intervals in crisis moments, student life has always been dominated by grades and grade point averages. The authors of Making the Grade maintain that, though it has taken different forms from tune to time, the emphasis on grades has persisted in academic life. From this premise they argue that the social organization giving rise to this emphasis has remained remarkably stable throughout the century. Becker, Geer, and Hughes discuss various aspects of college life and examine the degree of autonomy students have over each facet of their lives. Students negotiate with authorities the conditions of campus political and organizational life--the student government, independent student organizations, and the student newspaper--and preserve substantial areas of autonomous action for themselves. Those same authorities leave them to run such aspects of their private lives as friendships and dating as they wish. But, when it comes to academic matters, students are subject to the decisions of college faculties and administrators. Becker deals with this continuing lack of autonomy in student life in his new introduction. He also examines new phenomena, such as the impact of -grade inflation- and how the world of real adult work has increasingly made professional and technical expertise, in addition to high grades, the necessary condition for success. Making the Grade continues to be an unparalleled contribution to the studies of academics, students, and college life. It will be of interest to university administrators, professors, students, and sociologists. |
Contents
List of Tables | |
Acknowledgments | |
Introduction to the Transaction Edition | |
The Nature of Our Problem | |
The University of Kansas | |
The Grade Point Average Perspective | |
Organizational Rules and the Importance of Grades | |
FacultyStudent Interaction | |
Information and the Organization of Activity | |
The Pursuit of Grades | |
Bases of Judgment and Evaluation | |
Evidence for the Existence of the Grade Point Average Perspective | |
Conclusion | |
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Common terms and phrases
ability academic area academic performance accept achieve acquire adequate grades analysis Anselm L Ashley Montague assignments Becker behavior Blanche Geer campus organizations Chapter Chicago classroom collective action course criterion deal defined definition demands desire develop discussion dormitory effect effort exam examinations faculty and administration faculty members fail field notes formal fraternities and sororities freshman George Herbert Mead give goal going GPA perspective grade point average grading system graduate Howard important independent individual instance institutional institutionalized instructor interaction interest judgment kind living group low grades major matter mean meet number of students observer Participant Observation participants perspective on academic point average perspective point of view Prairieville prestige problems professor questions reason relation rewards rules scholarship halls semester situation social sophomore student activity Student Culture student organizations student perspectives teacher term paper things University of Kansas