First, I envy you. Education in North America is not free. University costs you tens of thousands of dollars for 4-5 years, college costs several thousand for 2-3 years but either way, we pay to be mis-informed here.
As such, I consider myself more a paying customer than a student and I am NOT a satisfied customer.
Concerning our grading, we have three different systems here. And we use all three. We have letter grades, percentages and grade point averages. Due do this strange system, our in class marks are percentages, the marks the instructor submits to the school are letter grades and the final transcript released by the college is letter and GPA.
I personally prefer percentages and due to this strange and byzantine system, in some of my classes, I never knew that final percentage, only the range encompassed by the letter grade and GPA.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
It is well outside the scope of an ezine article to be an exacting audit of the individual courses, the overall program, the tuition, text books or college faculty.
This is not a essay or investigative report. There were no formal interviews, just some informal, off-the-record chats with some students, instructors and other staff.
As such, what follows is a much more casual overview of my recent college experiences.
Payroll Administration
ACCT-1060
Summer 2007
Instructor: Nancy
My Monday night class, an elective I took for two reasons:
It allowed me to accomodate three of the programme's four required courses in my first semester schedule while fitting in a fourth course. And it was cheap. The "text books" were the various free publications from Revenue Canada; the federal and provincial tax tables, CPP rates, the EI premiums, special deductions etc.
Now payroll is not an area I'd ever want to work in, accountancy isn't my cup of tea, but with the relevant tax guides, a calculator and even basic intelligence, it isn't rocket science.
However, part of a student's success is motivation and this instructor didn't motivate you. Worse, she inspired no confidence in her ability to teach.
The first class, an overview, was fine and she was pleasant enough but when the "teaching" started I realised she didn't belong in front of a class.
She made far too many mistakes, sometimes catching herself but just as often by students already working in payroll and finally made this sweeping statement to cover herself:
"Payroll is largely interpretational. If you make a mistake, as long as you consistently make the same mistake, the fine won't be that bad."
Unbelievable.
Most of the students complained and some stopped going to class but by then it was too late to drop the course. It was on your official transcript.
I was so appalled I was paying for this that I became apathetic. I considered her, and the course, as a write-off. I answered enough of each exam and assignment for a passing grade and left the rest blank.
My Final Grade:
D+/55-59%/GPA 1.5
My Grade of the course/instructor:
F/0-49%/GPA 0.0 - Unsatisfactory