Starfleet Academy grading system

[Caliburn24]

That is true, which is why I said they would get ranked among their peers.

But I cannot remember them ever talking about "grades" as such on screen.

 

[Vanyel]

That is true, which is why I said they would get ranked among their peers.

But I cannot remember them ever talking about "grades" as such on screen.

Didn't Picard tell Wesley he failed a class because of some girl whose name he carved in a tree? Would that imply a grading system?

 

[Colonel Midnight]

A point that has been overlooked somewhat is that Starfleet Academy is not your typical school, it is a military/professional school. Why would a gradepoint matter?

Well, for example, they would matter when deciding who gets the best postings and assingnments after graduating.

Didn't Bashir make a big deal about this saying he had his choice of postings, but chose DS9?

Indeed -- I kind of mentally read/heard that the Academy has something like a "Billet Night" (what we called at my school), where the person who was ranked #1 took his/her choice of assignment out of all possible for that year, #2 took theirs (not including #1's pick), and so on...

Thus, the Anchor person didn't have to worry about his/her selection. It was picked for them...

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Caliburn24]

How does Wesley carving a name in a tree lead to him getting failing grades?

I think it more likely that he breached the cadet code of conduct or amassed too many demerits or something along those lines rather than him getting a D' in a class because of a girl.

But I haven't seen that episode, is it the Final Duty(?), in years, so I could be wrong.

 

[Navaros]

The Academy just passes everyone who buys into the brainwashing mantras they indoctrinate into their students, i.e. the likes of which produced Riker's nutty former Captain and crew, and also the Valiant's nutty Captain and crew.

Really, no academic skill is required to pass anything in the Academy.

 

[Vanyel]

How does Wesley carving a name in a tree lead to him getting failing grades?

I think it more likely that he breached the cadet code of conduct or amassed too many demerits or something along those lines rather than him getting a D' in a class because of a girl.

But I haven't seen that episode, is it the Final Duty(?), in years, so I could be wrong.

Sorry for the poor sentence structure.

In The Game (according to Memory Alpha), Picard told Wesley that when he was in the Academy, he failed a semester of Organic Chemistry because of an "A.F."

You can see the scene HERE. It starts at 6:15.

Damn that's a lot of links.

Anyway, if you can fail, then it would seem that you would be graded. Having a Valedictorian would also imply some type of grading.

 

[StarryEyed]

I don't know exactly how the system would work but here are a few points:

1. Standards are standards. Everybody is going to be "graded" on the same system. If that means certain species will rarely be able to serve in certain roles because of biological limitations than so be it.

2. What ever system they used, it would be WAY better than anything we use today. One of the things that made me absolutely cringe was the mention of "high school" in several episodes and novels. The Federation and Starfleet obviously have very advanced education methods when they teach ten-year olds calculus (TNG-When the Bough Breaks) and when the average 24th century Human is brilliant by our standards.

3. Our current systems put WAY too much emphasis on passing tests. The goal of education is to learn the material - not pass a test. A test is simply a tool to determine if learning has taken place or not. I don't know what kind of a system would be used to differentiate between students or if one would even be needed but it would be far different than the system we use now. It might make more sense to simply teach until a certain standard is met - regardless of how many tries or long it takes. The "grade" might be how quickly the student mastered the material.

4. All pure academic learning would be individualized because it simply doesn't make sense to do it any other way. You would only put a group of people in a classroom together when the subject matter required interaction between students.

 

[T'Girl]

Where was it stated that the Academy only graduates the top so and so percentage of cadets? I'm sure some drop out due to this or that reason, but forced out of the Academy because of their grades? I must have missed that episode.

In a short story by Alan Dean Foster, the Cait character M'ress goes into how her class or form started with over a thousand cadets and through a process of elimination the number is dropped to four hundred, what she refers to as "The Four Hundred." Kirk in TMOST and in various novels is frequently said to have been in the top ten percent of his class at the academy, it's never made clear if that's the top of the entire graduating class or if only the top ten percent graduate and receive commissions.

But it might not be that bad, the US Naval Academy at Annapolis loses 14 percent during the basic training phase and then over the next four years the failure rate is 23 percent.

 

[Snaploud]

I'm sure starfleet cadets all have some level of highly developed memorization skills. Plus, the "easy" classes (for any given person/species) will likely just be "tested out" and removed as a requirement for those individuals (thereby eliminating their potential grade-point average boosts). I seriously doubt they made Data take any classes that relied heavily on just memorization. He would have focused most of his time on leadership, ethics, and high-level problem solving skills (something beyond just solving equations). I'm sure the academy would have provided enough high level courses to satisfy even the most intelligent of students (if only by giving them transporter access to experts from around the planet--who would serve as mentors whenever on-campus professors were lacking).