comment: >
  
  I think the information can be categorized.
  For example, percentage based on classes in your major vs percentage based on non-major classes.
  Though I'm not sure that the ease of the system for institutions is in question. It may be easier for institutions, but it's still not a fair system.
context: I would argue that a mitigating factor is that GPA isn't really used for individual classes, but over the whole education. In that time frame, we might assume that a student's course grades will be randomly distributed about their "true competence" in that class, so in fact an 89% student is only slightly less likely to get an A- than a 90% student. Thus, their average grade should tend to reflect that, where they'll both be hanging out around a 3.5 over the forty or so courses that constitute a degree. >
  
  Sure, there may be some mitigation but I don't see how this makes the conversion of in-class percentage to 4.0 any better.  To receive a 3.5, one must have an equal amount of A- and B+ (of the same credit value). Meaning that a typical 0.5% of in-class, in all of one's classes, has the weight of 0.2 on the 4.0 scale. Thats a massive step for what could simply be a student getting a single question wrong in every class. >
  
  Do all classes have the same grading scales now? When I was in college each class tended to have its own grading scale, which was then potentially subject to a curve being implemented. In my experience, an 89% in one class could be a B+, while that same percentage could be an A in another. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense to associate GPA to raw percentages of points you received in all classes. >
  
  It really depends on the state and school. For the case youre referencing most professors usually convert the percentage into a letter based on their own criteria but the vast majority use the same metric. >
  
  I would challenge your assertion that a vast majority use the same metric. That certainly differs from my experience and from what I’ve generally seen, professors have freedom to grade on whatever scale they choose. 
  A raw percentage score that a student receives can be as much a reflection of the quality of the teacher and how easy a given assignment is. >
  
  I would argue the exact opposite of what you are. The GPA system needs to be built to reflect lower grades, not higher. In the past 40 years GPAs have drifted up almost a full .5 points. Someone with a 4.0 average today would theoretically have been expected to have a 3.5 40 years ago. So... a student who would have had a 3.5 and a student who would have had a 4.0 grade 40 years ago would have a 4.0 average today. What you have done by all of those round ups is taken away the accomplishments of those students who would have had a 3.6 or above 40 years ago. 40 years ago a 4.0 might have been enough on its own to take you to the next level and/or get you that scholarship. Now it is a 4.0 and x,y,z. >
  
  So I think the overall restructuring of the GPA system is fine. However, I'd ask whether the upward drift in GPA over the last 40 years is due to inflation of grades or rather is it due to students having access to better studying methods? You seem to be that this change is taking away from accomplishments made 40 years ago. I'd say that's only true if the upward drift in GPA is caused by factors other than students study habits and overall effort. >
  
  I think it's a combination of improved study habits but also institutional pressure.
  The administration doesn't like failing students or giving them poor grades - this shows especially in graduate school, where you kinda have to try to fail. There's a saying among graduate students where you take the "gentleman's B" in a situation where you basically check out of a class and don't put in any effort to succeeding (because, for example, you have research or other commitments that are taking up much of your time), but don't actively hamstring yourself either, thus getting a B. >
  
  So then you must also have a problem with the A-F grading scale too (and any discontinuous range scale).
  Sometimes ancillary considerations can bump a student's grade from 89% to an A-. This is why it's important to attend class, complete homework thoroughly, and participate/ask questions when in class. Not only does that increase your chances of earning an A, but it also provides a modicum of insurance in case you're a borderline case between two letter grades. A professor who remembers that you tried your hardest, cared about the material, and respected the professor may bump you up. >
  
  All of this is negligible if the professor still doesn't like rounding up grades. Your grade should reflect your work, not be processed twice over via letter grades and again on the 4.0 scale. >
  
  So after 12 classes for 2 years with a mix of A, -B, A, +C, B, -A, +D, A, -A, D, -A, +B. How would you quantify there academic associates (assuming they were not pushing for a bachelors)? >
  
  My original argument is that the 4.0 scale is not effective because of its conversion from letter grades. 
  If I was granted the ability to change how schooling works, I would also remove the letter grade. Reward students with the percentage they earn, especially as every professor has a different letter value. >
  
  I think what you are failing to discuss is the issue of binning, that is, creating meaningful distinctions between students that can be quickly representative of their academic accomplishments. With GPA we create a 500 point scale which can be easily understood to be within the relevant range of academic achievement. 
  The issue that you bring up can also be understood to be dual problems of too much granularity when looking at the points earned and too little when considering the teachers feel for the students. What gpa does is it bins together similar accomplishments, I.e. near perfect, really good, quite good, good, etc. and it allows teachers to bump someone meaningfully from one tier to another. It also gets rid of the failure range of accomplishment and makes it all zero. 
  Now you’ve rightfully pointed out that there isn’t much difference between 89 and 90 percent. But hear could also be vastly different students in terms of effort and understanding. Part of a teachers job is to assess learning which may not be entirely represented by assignment scores.
  While we often use scores to asses learning, it is neither a complete nor particularly good measure >
  
  What’s missing from your argument is any better idea.
  
  
  We can’t switch to a straight report percentage right because a lot of classes don’t use the same scales. For example in advanced chemistry getting a lower score may still be a very high percentile. For example I was sad to get a 72% once, then discovered the average was a 40%. My 72% was a high A.
  
  
  You really can’t compare raw percents even between profs. Sometimes they write different exams for the same course and end up with different averages.
  
  
  Some subject are very subjective. Eg english. A lot of what separates a 90% from an 80% on a given assignment might just be that profs preferences.
  
  
  We can’t really just report percentiles. Most courses don’t have “normal” eg symmetric distributions. And your particular university may have wildly different competition.
  
  
  Some have used ranking eg they report your performance next to others, listed out from best score to worst. This leads to ultra competitive environments and destroys any semblance of teamwork.
  
  
  So we’ve come up with this weird system that ranks students roughly, then we hope over a 4 year degree those errors in percent will cancel out. There’s something to the argument that an 89% isn’t substantively different that a 90%. But over 4 years the guy consistently getting 88%-92% has his GPA average out and gets As and Bs, while the guy with 93-97% consistently gets As.
  There are very, very rare situations in which literally one letter grade in one class changes someone’s future, but those are rare, and I don’t have a better idea. >
  
  With all due respect a conceed your points but OP Doesn’t necessarily have to make an assertive claim to make a objectively correct one. >
  
  I'm sympathetic to your view, but this:
  
  I simply think its inappropriate for a student to not be properly represented by the percentage they earned in-class.
  
  is questionable to me.
  My experience in school was that the vast majority of assignments were not designed in such a way to convey a grade that is as granular as you are suggesting. I.e., do you think that all students who score 96/100 are exactly 1% more knowledgeable than students who score 95/100? I don't think that's true within classes, or even on the same assignment within classes.
  Even if the discontinuity of the GPA scale has flaws, I think that reporting a raw percentage is ultimately an exercise in artificial precision. >
  
  I don't think students who are score 96% are 1 % smarter than 95%, I just think we need to reward students with what they earn, as that very same 1% can mean the difference between a B+ and a A-. >
  
  Now I'm more confused. If you don't think the distinction between 95% and 96% is meaningful, then why is it important to report the exact percentage? Why couldn't you just report "95+%"? And then how would that be different than the GPA system, in the first place? >
  
  cause you have to report something. No one cares for a 95% vs 96% difference, on their own, in a class. But with the 4.0 scale and 89 vs 90, suddenly that 1% difference becomes important. >
  
  So since "no one cares," let's say that it would be acceptable for a class to report final grades in 5-pt block ranges, e.g., "95+%," "90-94%," "85-89%," etc.
  That to me seems extremely similar to reporting a discontinuous GPA scale of "4.0," "3.7," "3.3," etc.
  It sounds like your hang-up is not that the GPA scale is discontinuous, but rather, your hang-up is how each block range is weighted when averaging grades across classes. >
  
  
  let's say that it would be acceptable for a class to report final grades in 5-pt block ranges, e.g., "95+%," "90-94%," "85-89%," etc.
  
  But why would we? No blocks, just the number. >
  
  To put it another way:
  Let's say you have a class with 3 assignments, each worth equal weight. You score 80%, 85%, and 91%, respectively, on the 3 assignments.
  Should your final grade be reported as 85? 85.3? 85.33333? "85-86"? "85-89"? "80-89"?
  The question becomes, how much precision is useful or meaningful?
  Based on your comments, it seems like your concern wasn't with how much precision there is in the GPA scale, but rather, how to weigh (or average across) grades from different classes when the grades are measured with imperfect precision.
  Or at a minimum, I think you should acknowledge that the level of grade precision is a distinct concept from the way that a "total GPA" is calculated. >
  
  just round to 3 digits >
  
  So you are saying the distinction between a 95 and a 96 is not meaningful, but the grade should still be reported to a meaningless level of precision? >
  
  The only 1% difference is why the gpa system is garbage. There’s little to no meaningful difference in a student who receives a 89 and a 90, so why do we have a 4.0 system which arbitrarily widens the gap between these two scores in terms of how we weight them? >
  
  Your error here is in these statments:
  
  A student can have a consistent score of 89%... a student can have a consistent score of 90%
  
  They cannot. The calibration of assessment is simply not this precise.  
  If a student's 'true ability' is 89%, some days they will get lucky in having studied the things that were specifically on the test more than the things that weren't, or get lucky in terms of the professor grading an ambiguous question a little more favorably, and get a 95; some days those factors will randomly go against them and they will get a 83.
  Like literally any measurement of anything, the measured values will cluster around the true value, and the true value can only be estimated more precisely than the calibration by averaging over many measures. An 89 student and a 90 student will both get a bunch of Bs and As and mostly A- and B+ in all their classes, and when you calculate their overall average GPA over all their classes it will be almost identical. >
  
  Although I recognize this is not statistically common, it was to  easily serve a point. 
  You're over looking this.
  
  1% ( to \~5%) of a score in-class has the weight of about 10% on a 4.0 scale
  
  I recognized that the gap can be as large as 5% (such as 87% vs 92% ). My main point was that a student can either rapidly increase or decrease their GPA based on a score of 1%. By using a pure, representative metric where we scale students using their raw 100 scale score from class, students wouldn't have to worry whether or not chaotic factors will favor them in raising their grade by 1-2%, just to increase their semester 4.0 value GPA by a value of 0.4 >
  
  
  My main point was that a student can either rapidly increase or decrease their GPA based on a score of 1%. 
  
  Only in freshman year, and only temporarily.  The more data points you gather, the more accurate it will be, and there's little reason to care about short-term measures.
  I mean, yes, you're correct that more precise reporting is more precise.  But more categorical reporting has it's own benefits in terms of simplicity and grouping things for various purposes.  
  Any non-continuous scale used for any reason will have fuzziness on the borders between categories, always.  There are reasons we categorize and use less-than-maximal numbers of significant digits, anyway.
  My point is just, it's not nearly as bad as you represent it, because calibration is imprecise and things work out the way you'd want in the long run.  This is balanced against the benefits of of a more grouped system.
  Just for example - whether you report a grade or a percet, you still have the have a cutoff point for failure vs not failure, honors roll vs not honors roll, etc.  Saying that a 66 is a pass and a 65 is a fail is no better for the person who got a 65 than saying that an F is a fail and a D is a pass.  All it does if highlight the injustice more starkly, without removing the need for it. >
  
  
  Only in freshman year, and only temporarily. The more data points you gather, the more accurate it will be, and there's little reason to care about short-term measures.
  
  No true, I'm doing a masters with about 160 creds under my belt. A single B+ can mean whether or not I can get into dental school.
  
  I mean, yes, you're correct that more precise reporting is more precise. But more categorical reporting has it's own benefits in terms of simplicity and grouping things for various purposes.
  
  But that simplicity can cost competitive students a seat in school. 
  
  Saying that a 66 is a pass and a 65 is a fail is no better for the person who got a 65 than saying that an F is a fail and a D is a pass. All it does if highlight the injustice more starkly, without removing the need for it.
  
  but conversely,  there is the injustice of holding a student, who earns an average of 89.5%, and rewarding them with a 3.5. Meanwhile if they can only increase their efforts by \~0.5% in every class, they can earn a 3.7. This could prevent a student from entering a graduate school of their dreams. >
  
  Most instructors are aware of the vast difference between adjacent grades and so there is a tendency to round up a student's grade if their percentage is on the line and the student demonstrates ability otherwise. Also, students are definitely aware of the difference between adjacent grades and tend to put in the effort to raise an 89 to a 90 more than they would to, for example, raise an 86 to an 87. >
  
  
  Most instructors are aware of the vast difference between adjacent grades and so there is a tendency to round up a student's grade if their percentage is on the line and the student demonstrates ability otherwise. 
  
  Doesn't this sort of aid OP's argument then? If professors understand how substantial a change like this is and even take measures to mitigate it, doesn't it mean something is a bit unfair with the system? >
  
  But who is it unfair to? It's gotta be a vanishingly small number of people who are significantly affected over the longrun. You might get an 89 in one class and get a b+ instead of an a-, and that sucks. But it's not like there's some group of "89 scorers" that are systematically affected. >
  
  It doesn't just apply to people who score 89.
  Someone could get a 93 and still maintain the same GPA as someone who gets a 100. That is a 7 point difference. Yet someone can score an 87 instead of a 91 and they'd be at a 3.3 vs a 3.7 despite it only be a 4 point difference.
  It may not affect many people but it's still unfair and not very precise. Even as you said, it's not uncommon for professors to raise a student's score up as to not be affected by the GPA scale. >
  
  I've always thought that the letter/4.0 grading system was partially a recognition of the fact that we don't really have the capacity to evaluate a student's abilities with that much precision and accuracy. A hundred point scale allows (for example) a graduate school to compare and rank applicants more easily, but does it actually give them more useful information or just more information?