Beyond grades: the depth of the challenge universities face
1 May 2026
In this post, CRADLE PhD student Lincoln Then James offers his reflections on our third seminar for 2026, ‘Is it time to move beyond grades?’ After situating grades in their historical context, this presentation challenged attendees to reconsider long-held beliefs about grades and whether there is still a place for grades in today’s universities.
Is it time to move beyond grades?
On Wednesday, 15 April, I had the pleasure of attending Dr Juuso Nieminen’s seminar ‘Is it time to move beyond grades?’ I was immediately interested in this seminar, having recently read some of Juuso’s work on assessment-as-becoming (Nieminen & Yang, 2024, Nieminen, 2025) where he (and a colleague) argued that assessment changes students, and that this identity formation is often overlooked.
Dr Juuso Nieminen presents the seminar (Siham AbuKhalaf)
Dr Nieminen positioned grades as ‘institutional representations of what students can do’. That grading generates categorical and hierarchical symbols about a student, or the arvosana of a student (Finnish for ‘value judgement’). This brought back memories of teaching in career education, where students often believe that the best way to articulate their capabilities to employers is through recreating their transcripts (‘I got an HD in Marketing Fundamentals, a C in Management, and a D in Accounting for Decision Making’).
Such an approach is unlikely to support employers in their hiring decisions; it doesn’t address what was taught, what students learned, or how they may apply that learning to the role they’re applying for. I am not arguing here that employability and students’ first job post-graduation is the main purpose of a university degree, but we should be supporting students to effectively articulate their capabilities to employers and minimise the gap between academic and employer understandings of job-readiness (Jackson & Chapman, 2012).
So then, why grading?
Dr Nieminen talked about how research has shown that grading is subjective and unreliable (Brookhart et al., 2016), may be too detailed or too superficial, is difficult to interpret (Lipnevich et al., 2020), and (perhaps most concerning, for me at least):
… undermines intrinsic motivations among students for becoming independent, critically engaged, self-directed learners – again, the type of learners who are widely held to be essential for preserving healthy democratic societies instead substituting extrinsic motivations of working and learning to gain reward or recognition from others, or avoid failure or discipline (Tannock, 2017, p. 1350).
Dr Nieminen’s seminar elegantly explored a plethora of arguments, too many to summarise in a short blog post. But given that my work and PhD centres on the learning our students need for their future (both as future professionals, citizens and humans), this seminar helped me further understand the depth of the challenge universities face; it’s more than ‘just’ the secure assessment challenge AI poses (Nicola-Richmond et al., 2025, Corbin et al., 2025), but perhaps a deeper reconceptualisation of what student learning looks like, and how we seek to prepare our students for their futures.
Missed the seminar? Catch up on our YouTube channel!
About Lincoln
Lincoln Then James is a PhD student with CRADLE, and a Learning Designer with the Faculty of Arts and Education. His research interests include student learning over time, identity formation, and graduate employability. Most recently, he has been working on course-wide learning design, accessibility, and building students’ critical digital literacy.
Don’t miss our two upcoming seminars in May
Entangled Intelligence with Professor Jason Lodge
Wednesday 13 May
In this seminar the University of Queensland’s Professor Jason Lodge will consider whether generative AI is fundamentally restructuring how students think, and ask what might this means for assessments and assessment validity.
Voice-First Written Assessment with Kelly Webb-Davies
Tuesday 26 May
In this seminar, the University of Oxford’s Kelly Webb-Davies will outline Voice-First Written Assessment – a two-stage assessment model designed in response to the evidentiary crisis that generative AI poses for educators assessing students’ ideation and reasoning
References
Brookhart, S. M., Guskey, T. R., Bowers, A. J., McMillan, J. H., Smith, J. K., Smith, L. F., Stevens, M. T., & Welsh, M. E. (2016). A Century of grading research: Meaning and value in the most common educational measure. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 803–848. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316672069
Corbin, T., Dawson, P., & Liu, D. (2025). Talk is cheap: Why structural assessment changes are needed for a time of GenAI. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 50(7), 1087–1097. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2503964
Jackson, D., & Chapman, E. (2012). Non‐technical skill gaps in Australian business graduates. Education + Training, 54(2-3), 95–113. https://doi.org/10.1108/00400911211210224
Lipnevich, A. A., Guskey, T. R., Murano, D. M., & Smith, J. K. (2020). What do grades mean? Variation in grading criteria in American college and university courses. Assessment in Education, 27(5), 480–500. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2020.1799190
Nicola-Richmond, K., Dawson, P., Helen, P., & Macfarlane, S. (2025). It takes a village… Program-wide approaches to redesigning assessment in a time of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). University Teaching and Learning Practice, 22(7). https://doi.org/10.53761/zpp2ja61
Nieminen, J. H. (2025). How does assessment shape student identities? An integrative review. Studies in Higher Education, 50(2), 287–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2334844
Nieminen, J. H., & Yang, L. (2024). Assessment as a matter of being and becoming: Theorising student formation in assessment. Studies in Higher Education, 49(6), 1028–1041. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2257740
Tannock, S. (2017). No grades in higher education now! Revisiting the place of graded assessment in the reimagination of the public university. Studies in Higher Education, 42(8), 1345–1357. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1092131
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