Grades on the Columbia equivalent of the Moodle/Blackboard student portal can and do update instantly as soon as teachers hit submit. This is a recently updated, fairly modern system. However, these are not necessarily the official grades that go on your transcript. In my experience, teachers often never post the (possibly curved) final letter grade on this system. I assume that transcript grade system is a separate portal that teachers have to input the final letter grades into. This system, from the POV of the student, only updates once per day. Teachers put their grades in at 5pm? You get your "grade has been posted email" at like 2 am, and practically speaking get your grade whenever you wake up.
Is that really that big of a deal, though? There would be effectively zero benefit to giving the students their new grades on demand instead of after a batch process. It's not a reason to upgrade the system, it just shows that the system was made when batch jobs were considered acceptable.
I do not miss those days of waking up early in the morning after finals to find those emails. I would nervously read them in hopes of not being disappointed by my grade
