On Your Mark

Alexander D. Gregor is Director, Centre for Higher Education Research
and Development, University of Manitoba, and the co-editor of
Postsecondary Education in Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

We have seen a rising tide of academic self-help books during the last
several years, most having to do either with getting into the right
program or with surviving financially once there. On Your Mark, on the
other hand, seems to trace its self-help roots back to Machiavelli’s
The Prince. It is rather cynical, but at the same time arguably
effective. The book’s subtitle nicely conveys the cynicism: “Two
insiders give you the lowdown on getting better grades without working
harder or being smarter.” The “insiders” are two young Canadian
university professors, and the “lowdown” derives from their own
experience.

Their main thesis is that understanding the university teacher
(professor or teaching assistant) as a human being, and understanding
the teaching and evaluation process, can allow the student to behave in
a way that will ensure the highest possible grades. A good deal of the
book is given over to an analysis of evaluation—grading within the
university. The reader is advised that this is a highly subjective
process, at least as much political as it is academic (with the
professor being obliged by institutional norms and self-interest to
operate within the “law of the grading scheme”). The trick for the
student is to learn how to get properly “slotted”—that is, to get
noticed, and to create the right sort of impression. Students who learn
to play that game receive, for work that is no better in intrinsic
quality, significantly higher grades than those accorded so-called
wallpaper students.

This book is a difficult one to assess. It does invite the student to
engage in hypocrisy and manipulation, notwithstanding some tips that may
make the university experience genuinely more profitable. At the same
time, it provides a provocative assessment of a human institution that
on close examination may not be living up to its claims and assumptions.
In that sense, it is a useful catalyst for institutional
self-examination.