Month: July 2024

In a society that encourages us to view businesses as evil, the greedy adversaries of the people, it’s important to realize that small businesses are themselves barely more than the people who comprise them and they are frequently worthy of our admiration and support, not our hostility and opposition. Small businesses are often the good guys, not the bad guys.

It has become all too easy to divide society into two teams: the people (who are surely good and righteous) and the businesses (who are certainly evil and avaricious); black and white. And in that black and white worldview, a middle ground can’t exist, so non-profit organizations of all sorts (i.e., academic institutions, foundations, and NGOs) demand to be part of Team People. It’s us versus them, everything is high-stakes, and the participants often define who is on which team or the other, even if they have conflicts of interest.

In reality, the stakes are not so high and the distinctions are not so clear or important. It’s a grey world after all. Everyone is human and looking for a path forward that satisfies their own needs, expectations, and desires. We’re not all good guys and bad guys; we’re all imperfect mixtures of good and bad. And one of the most undeservingly vilified categories is that of small businesses.

Small businesses are barely more than the individuals who comprise them. Those businesses share the needs, aspirations, and desires of their individuals, but they have an important measure of official organization demanded by the government. That organization brings with it both positive and negative aspects – a measure of legal separation that enables exploration and risk, and a burden of regulation, expenses, and oversight that encumber such development. It’s a mixed bag and no one should underestimate the complexity of trying to launch or maintain a small business.

To dehumanize small businesses into entities that we should treat as adversaries is just plain wrong. While it is convenient and even desirable for modern society to treat all businesses as sterile, never-touched-by-human-hands entities that sell products or services in hermetically sealed and perfectly uniform packages, that is a silly and counterproductive conceit. Nearly everything is touched and affected by humans and that is a good thing, not a failing. Small businesses involve real people and many or even most of them care that you are happy, satisfied, and supported by what they provide. Don’t expect inhuman/antihuman treatment; instead, expect human treatment and respond positively to it when it is good and makes the world a better place.

So where does “no consequences” fit into this essay? It is in the misassignment of what is human and what is less so. Treating small businesses as though they are large businesses, with nameless hordes of people who can be treated as objects rather than human beings, is a serious mistake. Even some large businesses are more human than we typically admit. People are people, and the closer those people are to whatever products, services, or other activities they provide, the more they deserve and value being treated as people. As the co-owner of a tiny business (Adaptive Rubber LLC and its products at EarJellies.com), I can say from experience that working with people as individuals and sharing the human experience with them is more valuable than anything else on either end of any transaction.

Furthermore, expecting grey-area organizations to be “good guys” because of their titles, names, or categories (e.g., academic institutions, non-profits, NGOs) is uncertain at best. Organizations tend to drift away from their original missions once they become large and their workforces begin to think of themselves as employees. Businesses, companies, and organizations become problematic when their employees begin to lose sight of their missions and begin working primarily for incomes rather than purpose. It’s okay for people to earn a living; they need it and it wouldn’t make sense if they did otherwise. But it’s less okay for people to work only for incomes and say to hell with the people at the other end of any transaction or interaction. For the most part, small businesses keep track of the former behavior and deserve our praise and support.

Grades used to mean something in colleges and high-schools, but not anymore. In most schools and most disciplines, human nature has done away with meaningful grades.

Most college (and high school) classes are graded. In the past, those grades served two important purposes. First, they motivated students to work harder and put in the time, energy, and effort necessary to acquire a real education. Second, they provided some lasting measure of the students’ performances: how much they’d learned, how well they thought, how deeply they engaged, how motivated they were, and everything people used to mean by the term “education.”

But meaningful grading is hard work and, in the absence of strong incentives, it falls by the wayside. Meaningful grading means that some students won’t get A’s, or even B’s, and some of them might not even pass the class. People are different in so many ways and their performances in educational contexts are inevitably different. Meaningful grades are intended to encourage students to do their best at the time and then to reflect the differences in what they did.

Alas, meaningful grading has some uncomfortable consequences—ay, there’s the rub¹. Current students believe that education is all about getting high grades and are unhappy (or even outraged) when they receive anything less. Faced with a B (or less), they complain and browbeat their instructors for regrades, do-overs, extra credit and other special deals that require more work by the instructors. Their parents complain on their behalf and go over instructors’ heads to get what they want. And other institutional and societal constituencies apply their own pressures in advocating for the students they support. There is lots of academic privilege and entitlement around these days.

Thus, instructors who spend the time necessary to give meaningful grades must then deal with pushback and that grief consumes their time and peace of mind. Moreover, instructors are typically reviewed and rewarded based in part on student feedback, so there are direct negative consequences (i.e., punishment) for making students unhappy. Since there are no consequences (and less work) to giving out As and substantial costs to anything less, it’s no wonder most instructors don’t sweat over grades anymore. Let them all have As! ²

Lastly, institutions (I’m thinking primarily of colleges, but also some high schools) are rated in part on graduation rates and how quickly students earn their degrees. Those ratings are important to the institutions, which like all companies and many organizations want happy customers and seek to attract more. Since there are no consequences to awarding degrees to less than educated students, why worry about something as inconsequential as the integrity of grading? We’re “just trying to keep my customers satisfied, satisfied.”³

It should be clear at this point that meaningful grading is an ordeal for everyone. Students don’t like it because they’re in school to have a pleasant four years (I’m thinking of college), not have to work too hard, get the highest possible grades, and receive a degree—that golden credential that will lead inevitably to success in life!? Instructors don’t like meaningful grading because it requires so much additional work and the potential of punishment. And institutions don’t like it because it upsets the smooth flow of students through the years to graduation and upsets people in ways that threaten income and ratings, and introduces various types of risk.

So grades inflate and everyone is happy! It’s a no-consequences celebration! Students are happy because they get As and they will surely be rich and famous going forward. Parents are happy because their kids are obviously doing so well and will be wildly successful. Instructors are happy because they don’t have to work as hard assigning meaningful grades to student output that is increasingly juvenile now that high grades are so easily obtained. And institutions are happy because all their students are excelling, paying tuition, graduating promptly, and touting their schools as great and fun and “the best years of their lives.”

Given the various incentives and disincentives, it’s no wonder that grades have inflated into a meaningless mush here in the United States over the past 30 or 40 years. It’s win-win-win!

Okay, there are a few minor consequences, notably a changing in the amount of actual education delivered per (constant) dollar spent. But I’ll focus only on difficulties meaningless grades impose on the job market. For decades, grades and degrees were used for important purposes, notably identifying people who thought well, knew and understood much, and had strong motivation and character. They were also used to discriminate against certain people without violating laws. But now that everyone looks wonderful on paper and college degrees are abundant, what can a potential employer look for when deciding whom to hire?

The answer is straightforward but requires effort: employers must set aside meaningless grades and degrees, and investigate what is going on between each candidate’s ears independently. They must do their due diligence and study what each candidate knows, what they understand, how they think, what is their motivation and character, and what they will bring to the job that is before them.

For jobs that don’t actually require college educations, employers should stop requiring college degrees—why prefer people with meaningless credentials to others who are willing and able to do the job well and possibly better and have shown the good taste not to waste time on a worthless degree?

For jobs that really do require a college education, assess that education! Ignore the (meaningless) grades and instead ask the candidates to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, thinking, character, motivation, passion, morals, ethics, and intelligence. Don’t be blinded by the flashiness of their credentials—elite degrees have become hollow luxury goods, equivalent to designer bags of dubious quality—and do a serious assessment of the person behind the façade. These days, no one should judge people by their meaningless educational credentials any more than by the color of their skin. Instead, judge them “by the content of their character.”⁴

1. (thanks, WS and Hamlet)
2. Marie Antonette
3. Simon & Garfunkle
4. Martin Luther King, Jr.