Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

One really important factor is the grading curve, if used. At my university, I think the goal was to give the average student 60%, or a mid 2.1) with some formula for test score adjustment to compensate for particularly tough papers. The idea is that your score ends up representing your ability with respect to the cohort and the specific tests that you were given.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/current/teach/general/...

There were several courses that were considered easy, and as a consequence were well attended. You had to do significantly better in those classes to get a high grade, versus a low-attendance hard course where 50% in the test was curved up to 75%.

This posts sums up everything that's wrong with grading and modern colleges.

Depends, is your goal in college to get a high GPA and look good for a job, or to truly learn and master content but not look as attractive on a resume without other projects?

Grading curves aim to mitigate punishment for the latter. It's part of why I could get a 2.5 GPA but still overall succeed in my career.

The foundational purpose of universities is truth-seeking, not job training. There's universities like Bologna, al-Qarawiyyin, Oxford or Cambridge that are more than 1000 years old.

The ultimate goal is knowledge cultivation.

You're more adapt to intellectual work only if you actually cultivate knowledge.

If all this college circus is, farming grades, then universities are ultimately failing at their job.

I don't disagree with you at all. But we both probably know that that isn't the reality as of the last half a century or so.I'd love to properly separate acedemia and create a bolstering apprenticeship/trades programs for several sectors to properly train a workforce, but there's basically zero momentum for that among white collar work.

Also note that GPA isn't just for jobs. Applying for school post bachelor's cares the most about a GPA. So a bad grade but learning a lot on a rigorous course can still male it hard to progress as a researcher or any other kind of specialized knowledge seeker.