Follow up to here.
I know I've had that feeling before as a TA. I've definitely heard stories from other TA's about this thing too, and I'm not at a school that's anything like Harvard.
Fuckin' joke college is. When I was a TA (not at a highly competitive or Ivy league school...as if that even matters), I flat refused to change grades for anyone (unless, of course, I made a mistake). Crying is for kids, and I was very clear in the beginning of that class that I didn't pass out grades; you earned them, for better or worse. And that this is fucking college, and you are now all adults, so go fuck yourself if you want to be a whiny bitch. The universe is indifferent to your sniffling, and so am I. I once had a student cry to me, because she "tried really hard" and didn't deserve a D (her basic argument was that she had written a lot of words on her lab report). I told her that sometimes people don't do a good job, but that one score wouldn't affect her overall grade in the class too heavily, so not to worry about it. She sulked away. A few days later the prof whose class it was came to me and tried to "reason" with me that the student deserved a higher score. None of his reasons had anything whatsoever to do with the quality of the work. I told him it was his class, and he can pass out whatever grad he wants, if that's the way he wants to run the show. I have no idea what he did, because I never wanted to find out.I just didn’t want to deal with all the complaining.
Conversely, at the business school of my university, which I regret being a part of (but it was free), many of the classes make it borderline impossible to get A grades, on the theory that it will make them more legitimate. Which just further goes to show that no one has any idea why any higher education institute does anything. Except money.
Well, in my experience that's not entirely true. I grew up in a university town (born in another) and both of my parents work at a university, as do many of their brothers and sisters and of course friends. Dinner parties where there is more than one professor or administrator at an institution invariably suffers from talk of university politics. From what I've seen, everyone who works at a university has a very good idea of why their institution as a whole, does things and an even better idea of why their departments do things and everyone has a different idea of how it could/should be done. While it is often about money, it is also just as often things to do with petty human emotions like pride and preference, not to mention enmity.Which just further goes to show that no one has any idea why any higher education institute does anything. Except money.