I agree with you about it being broken. We’re so focused on grades because they are a believed to be an important part of the credentialing process for getting jobs. An ideal learning environment would likely be something closer to Plato’s academy, imo. Probably not possible under capitalism except for the very rich with a lot of leisure time.
At least in the fields mathematics, physics, and to a lesser extent CS (which has a huge number of students and is becoming like a new business degree), professors view undergraduate degrees as a way to find good students who can go on to graduate school. So there is a tendency to be adversarial in classes. The GPA is one way to measure student aptitude but it's not perfect. Typically more than one metric is taken. If you just love these topics that's a great thing to learn. But if you want to contribute to the fields, it will be hard unless you go through the credentialing process.
> We’re so focused on grades because they are a believed to be an important part of the credentialing process for getting jobs.
Various colleges (ex: Reed, Brown) in the U.S. don't have grades. Their graduates do just fine, afaik.
In defense of grades, they are a good extrinsic motivator for learning boring subjects. Grades are a good consequence for phoning in it. I would probably have skipped reading most of the books I was assigned to read in school if there were no consequences, and would have ended up an (even) less educated person if not for grades.
