<p>oldfort, do you mean calculations “by hand” as in calculations by pencil, with no calculator, or do you mean calculations with a calculator, but no supporting software? If it’s the former, I can’t imagine any American employer taking it seriously. </p>
<p>My grandfather (American) studied mathematics at Goettingen when it was arguably the top university in the world for mathematics. He was a professor of mathematics all his adult life. However, he claimed that he had never sent in an income-tax return without an error in the arithmetic somewhere–probably an exaggeration, but still . . . </p>
<p>The aspects of this story that are very weird are:
- The professor won’t let the student see the exam. My university requires faculty to save the exams for at least one semester, specifically for the purpose of showing them to the students. So one might have a student on one’s doorstep, asking to see the previous semester’s exam, on the very last day of the subsequent semester. The relevant rules here are the University of Sydney’s (where it is conceivable that students do not have a right to see their exams, although I would consider that misguided) and also–in my opinion–the home university’s rules. Does the college that your daughter attends require professors to show the students their exams? If so, with what rationale are they willing to allow a student to be failed in a course, when the student has done work well above the passing mark prior to the final, and cannot see the final?
- The remark that the student might have been failed as a woman and as an American is strange. Was the person who made that comment connected with the University of Sydney, or with the home institution? Also, was the person based in Sydney, or based in the U.S.? If not an American administrator based in the U.S., would the person who made that comment be willing to repeat it to a university administrator at your daughter’s home institution? Or if an American administrator based in the U.S., could that person act on his/her own initiative? </p>
<p>Our university has a requirement that grades must be given in “good faith.” The professor’s judgment cannot be called into question, as long as good faith is exercised. However, this seems like a case of bad faith, on the face of it. A student who alleges that a professor assigned a grade based on anything other than a good faith assessment of the performance in the particular course has the option of appealing administratively, through at least three levels, and the administrators at any level can change the grade, after a finding of “lack of good faith.” (It doesn’t have to be actual “bad faith.”)</p>
<p>Finally, are you sure that your daughter’s home school will show the foreign institution’s grades on the transcript? We do not. We simply show transfer credit granted, the name of the class and the number of credits. In a case like this, the failed class would not show up on the transcript at all, at our institution (and normally, as a large public university not in the top 20, we are pretty tough on the students). I think this is the typical practice–though maybe not universal. Perhaps your daughter could speak to someone about this, at her college?</p>
<p>For employment, grad school, etc., she would probably need to submit the transcript from Sydney (if they generate one) separately, but her regular transcript should not need to show the Sydney grades, in my opinion.</p>