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Old_Gold comments on Rationality Quotes Thread February 2016 - Less Wrong
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I feel I should point out that corrupt grading is easily detectable - one can often see it by looking at a corruptly graded paper, or by interviewing a candidate who got a high grade and finding that he does not know the subject. And thus, it is not covered by the Adams quote.
Moreover, universities have a strong incentive to not be corrupt in their grading - if they let people slip through without learning the work, employers will start to notice and discount qualifications from that institution, and then prospective students will hear of this and go to other institutions instead, and then the entire institution will collapse. (It's not immediate, or perfect, and quick action at the start of the process can save the institution, but it is a consideration).
Except who sees a paper except the grader and the student who wrote it?
Empirically this incentive wasn't strong enough.
You do have a recognizable style, y'know...
External examiners?
Very rare for undergrads.
In the UK it is standard - my institution has blind marking, double marking and scrutiny by external examiners for all undergraduate exams. Blind marking: we only have a candidate number and not a student's name. Second marking: someone else evaluates the marks (grades) I give - in some cases independently; external examiner: someone from another institution checks that the marking criteria is being followed.
Blind marking could be circumvented in various ways, but doing so would be risky as the exams will be seen by others. Second marking and external examining are a huge time burden but achieve some degree of quality control, especially important as students don't get to see their exam papers again (perhaps the biggest surprise to staff and students who come here from the US and are used to post-exam argumentation as a form of "quality control").
This screams "corruption". Knowing that students will be looking at how you grade their paper, and will be comparing how you grade them with how you grade others provides professors with some incentives to be honest and careful in grading.
I'm surprised students put up with it, but they don't know anything different. They hear about US students who argue every single grade but I don't think they realise such students actually exist.
However I'm really happy to be away from my first (US) academic post where I constantly faced pressure from an athletic department to "relax" on grades or overlook "minor problems" from athlete-students. Post exam argumentation from individual students is easy enough to deal with reasonably and honestly, institutional forces are another beast entirely.
Agreed.