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Comment by roland35 | Hacker News Reader

When I was a student at University of Florida, they didn't have - grades (i.e. A-, B-, etc). I heard it was due to a faculty protest against grade inflation, which in the end benefited me since a 90.0% was a full A on the 4.0 scale!

It looks like they have minus grades again, but I can't find any sources online - this was in the 2000's.

Also, it looks like the "New Engineering Building" is now just "Engineering Building". Maybe naming rights are still available if someone wants to donate a few million?

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Yes they have minus grades.

NEB is still called NEB or the "ECE" building along with Larson/Benton Halls.

There is the new Herbert Wertheim Engineering Lab which is the "New"est Engineering Building. The Malachowsky Data Science Building is under construction south of the Reitz Union, replacing the parking lot at the top of the Center Drive hill.

Source: Finished masters in 2019.

Thanks for the visual. Was wondering where they'd put all that swank NVIDIA hardware. The flythrough of interior[1] immediately reminded me of the interior stairs in the Huang Center at Stanford[2]...probably not a coincidence.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBctnZ2phUw

[2] https://bora.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bora_StanfordHuan...

Things have certainly changed a bit! That was a pretty good parking lot, most people didn't know about it. The biggest drama in ~2007 was when they renamed North-South drive "Gale Lemerand Drive". Everyone preferred the old name!

Is there a law or rule that (indirectly?) requires the letter grading system?

I considered going to a college that used a non-linear grading system: you’d receive an in depth essay explaining your strengths and weaknesses.

They would still create a standard lettered grade, but they would not give it to you unless you asked, and they advised you not to ask.

It was implied they needed to create the lettered grade to comply with some regulation - possible to show there was no racial bias? Not sure.

Probably unrelated, but New College of Florida [1], once part of the University of Southern Florida, never used grades.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_College_of_Florida

When I was at UF they often didn't give an A+ every semester or even every year, even though it had always been considered top attainment by an outstanding student. It could not bring your GPA above 4.0 anyway.

New College, Nova University, and FAU were considered to be the destinations for the experimental high school students who attended the original Nova from 7th through 12th grade. The high school had a bizarre stanine grading system that could not directly translate to mainstream ratings.

This was years before they invented "Middle School" for everyone else to replace Junior High.

Sounds like the protest wasn't very effective!

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