Rent-seeking activities are typically found in the political and corporate worlds, but there are corollaries in everyday academic life. It's midterms season at UVA, which means as students receive unsatisfactory results on their fall exams, they turn to their instructors and the grade appeals process. In an article from the Georgia State Signal, one student's course grade improved from a failing grade to a B- following the appeals process. Many universities have similar, simple processes.
Here's where the economics comes in -- the grade appeals process is simply a form of academic rent-seeking. It is an activity that uses resources (the time of both students and their instructors) to gain economics profits (additional grade points), diverting resources from otherwise valuable uses (their next exam, academic research, etc.).
In the name of "fairness" that regularly drives political lobbyists seeking extra protection for their industries, students seek point redistribution that will not only increase their grades, but hurt those of their classmates. In curved courses, and an improvement in the average caused by an increase in one student's grade will harm others in the final tallying of their letter grade.
This is not to say that grade appeals are not logical. For a utility-maximizing, rational student, the expected utility of a grade appeal is often very high. The process has additional merits, like potential learning opportunities before the next exam, but that is not to say that it is does not have demerits.
2 comments:
As you pointed out, grade appeals divert resources from otherwise valuable uses such as time studying for the next exam, academic research, etc. But the size of this Dead Weight Loss depends on how much of your grade the exam is worth. For example, if the exam is only worth 10 percent of your total class grade, though some small mistakes may have been made in grading that exam, it may not be worth the extra time and diverted resources that would otherwise be better utilized to finish or prepare for the assignments that consist of the other 90 percent of your total class grade. But if your exam is worth 50 percent of your total class grade, it is clearly worth the diverted time and resources required to repeal your original grade, especially if you notice that the grader made major mistakes, because this one exam could not only decide whether or not you pass the class but also your GPA and therefore, your future educational and job prospects.
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