According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 30 percent of college students reported stress had negatively affected their academic performance. Many students suffer from grade and test-related anxiety, which is only intensified by the inability to rely on professors to grade tests and assignments on time. Grading and returning tests and assignments in a timely manner is crucial to a student’s success and should not be taken lightly by university professors.
Many university students must maintain an elevated GPA to keep scholarships or federal aid. Funding from TOPS, which aided 133,000 students in Louisiana from 2005 to 2014, can be revoked if a student’s GPA drops below a 2.5 average. Due to this stipulation, many college students must closely monitor their grades to ensure they don’t drop below this standard and have their TOPS retracted. This causes immense stress and frustration on the part of students who have no control over how quickly they receive results back.
College students are held to strict deadlines they are expected to make with very little exception. Viable excuses students may give to receive pardon include illness, serious family emergency or military obligations, according to the University’s policies. Additionally, many professors include policies in their syllabus stating late work will receive a failing grade regardless of situation. If this uncompromising deadline is expected of students, then professors should be held to a similar standard with regards to grading students’ assignments, papers and tests.
There are countless tales of students panicking over the uncertainty of final grades in the days preceding the end of the academic semester. It is not uncommon for grades to be input only days before final exams, giving students little to no indication of their academic standing until there is no time left to improve. This prevents students from tracking their grades throughout the term and hinders their ability to self-assess what areas require improvement.
Accountability is a trait often reiterated by professors and university authority figures alike. Professors, along with their students, should share this accountability. The traditional college classroom cycle of teaching, testing and repeating is hindered by a professor’s refusal to grade and return tests and assignments in a timely manner. Students cannot be expected to learn and improve from their mistakes when corrective measures are delayed so far from completion of the assignment that they become irrelevant.
Professors, like students, should have consequences for not adhering to time restraints for grading. Most college students recognize how much responsibility professors carry and are understanding. However, when professors disregard their end of the bargain, it negatively affects the students who work hard to do well.
Hannah Kleinpeter is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
