Grading eggs and people

Near our home here in rural New Hartford, Connecticut is a small farm. The sign at the roadside says "Eggs here". Farm-fresh, free-range eggs are a treat. I stopped there earlier this weekend. The owner was busily sorting the eggs. Rather she was "grading" the eggs (AA, A, etc). She has an antique-looking tool that did this. I asked her why she sorted them in this time-honored fashion. She replied, "Would you buy our eggs, if you just had to pick them out of this basket? How would I price them?".

Now, a day after, I am here in my home office grading.! The tool that I have is rather modern - almost all the measured samples of student OB learning are recorded in the e-learning systems my university and text publisher give me to use. Yet, it is not eggs I am grading, it is the proven gain in each unique learner's capacity to think with and act according OB concepts met in 15 weeks of inquiry.

I have been grading students, placing on permanent record, a final measure of their OB/Managerial readiness, since 1973. You might think I am as settled in my reason and ability to do this, as our New Hartford egg-grader. "Would you hire this student from our university, if you just had to pick them out of the graduating class without a GPA to go by?". Students want to be priced high, like my egg-farmer's best.

I'd rather say, yes employers, please do make me work to produce more predictive and humane accounts of student progress;but the hiring community and graduate schools seem to prefer the easy economy of looking for the 3.6 GPA and buying no less than that grade human being.

You OB teachers with some long mileage on your careers know as well as I do - our former students are all over the success map. I have not come across research that proves that the one I am about to "give" a C- when I go back to my grade sheet this morning will end up ten years from now less able to be an alert judge of human behavior than the young woman whose "A" I recorded with ease and pleasure for her stellar performances in Mgt 426.

Me, an Entrepreneurial Teacher? Pish tosh. I am still grading human beings like the person who graded my breakfast (quite tasty, by the way).