What My Time Abroad Taught Me About the U.S. Education System

Grades are detrimental to the learning process

I felt an incongruous mix of excitement and apprehension when I traded sunny Claradise for rainy England this fall. When I found out I would be spending the entirety of my junior year at the University of Oxford, I began counting down the days until I could walk among the dreaming spires, meet new people and experience life in a new country. 

I was also uncertain about how well I would handle the academic rigor of Oxford. I was fearful of academic failure and a level of stress that would prevent me from enjoying the holistic study abroad experience.

The educational structure at Oxford differs extensively from that of traditional U.S. universities. It utilizes a unique way of teaching called the tutorial system in which students  attend “class” (meeting one-on-one with the professor) once per week and write a 2,000-3,000 word paper (problem sets for STEM folks) prior to each meeting. Personally, I took two courses per term: a “primary” that meets once a week and a “secondary” that meets once every other week.

A term at Oxford is eight weeks, which is quite short compared to the average U.S. college semester; but, if you do the math, I write a whopping 12 papers over that time—an anxiety-inducing feat for any college student. Despite this demanding academic structure, however, I feel less stressed about school than I have in years.

To my surprise, however, the tutorial system ended up being not only more manageable than anticipated, but more rewarding as well. I finished my reading lists and wrote my papers. And even though my procrastination tendencies followed me to Oxford, I had a successful, intellectually enriching and fun first term.

Toward the end of term, I came to another realization: despite multiple all-nighters, I had not felt nearly as stressed about academics as I did at Santa Clara. This realization was confusing; although my schoolwork at Oxford is more demanding than at Santa Clara, I never feel overwhelming anxiety or stress associated with each paper.

I attribute this feeling to a small difference in evaluation, but one that makes a world of difference: there are no grades at Oxford. Naturally, our professors give us an overall grade at the end of the term for our home U.S. universities to use. However, to a visiting student like me, these marks feel highly abstract because there are no grades assigned to individual assignments. My instructors give me feedback on my ideas—not the quality of my essays.

At Santa Clara—and during my high school career—I was embarrassingly fastidious about calculating what I had to get on assignments, tests and projects to get a certain grade in a class.

I know that my excessive use of RogerHub is far from uncommon. Many of my peers in the U.S. are equally anxious about keeping up their GPAs. In fact, according to Finances Online, 51.4% of college students nationwide have described their academics as being “traumatic or difficult to handle.”

Statistics like these suggest that it might be time to reconsider how our schools educate and evaluate children and young adults. A system that encourages the mentality that a high GPA is synonymous with academic success also motivates cheating and other breaches of academic integrity, introducing additional ways students can become stressed.  

At Oxford, there is no need to fret over how individual points on tests or homework affect a final grade. Lapses in memory that result in silly mistakes on multiple choice exams—a questionable way of testing students’ knowledge—are not a concern. Students are evaluated on their ideas and the arc of their learning process. As a result, cheating is fruitless, and consequently, virtually nonexistent. There is only an emphasis on learning, satiating students’ intellectual curiosities and facilitating an environment of academic growth rather than needless competitiveness. 

Admittedly, there is a need to be able to concretely measure how well students perform, but it does not have to be all consuming. At Oxford, full-time students spend two weeks taking exams at the end of their degree and the results determine what type of degree (their version of a GPA) they receive. Those two weeks are probably nerve-wracking, though arguably better than stressing about grades throughout college.

I do not have an answer to this pervasive issue, nor a particular alternative to the current U.S. educational structure. All I suggest is that intellectual enrichment be prioritized over numeric-driven goals. The stress and antagonistic competitiveness that accompany this system are a detriment not only to the mental health of students, but to their overall intellectual development.