Hi!

Do you mean for an academic jobs as researchers and / or teachers? In this case it is not too difficult to seek an answer. Academic grades/merits are apparently the only kind of criteria universities really trust and count for such jobs. Furthermore, many (professors, department officials etc) who hire young academics for a career at a university can see it as a disturbance if there is (relevant) working experience from outside of the academic sector - this makes application of accepted theory to use in research and teaching much more complex than if they hire someone that has not been out in working life at all. (But there are, luckily, some exceptions from this).

Remember that many of those who have academic jobs at a university never really anytime left school for other work for some meaningful lenght of time, and now they are in the upper end of the education sector. So why should they care about other criteria than the kind of critera that brouhgt them to the present position?

Anders Norberg

Yes I mean for academic ( research-cum-teaching) jobs. Actually if some one has a research/teaching experience why dint the selection penal evaluate his last 3-5 years of experience.

Hi! Evaluation of work experience of teaching and research at universities are evaluated, at least in Sweden. Or, should we rather say, research experience is evaluated from publications and similar, and teaching experience is also valued, at least one should not lack university teaching experience or have teaching experience from any other sector in society (which generally counts as nothing) -and at some unversities, there are structures in place for describing also teaching merits within university - but these structures have often a long way to go to balance the publication of papers.

Anders Norberg

There may be number of places like Sweden. But we can find places where application form are rejected on the basis of school and University grades Then what is the use of doing PhD and Post Doctoral research.  The effort of applicant for such a long journey after schooling is not valued. An applicant should be judge on the basis of his hold on the subject that he is going to teach and his research capabilities. Not on the basis of how much grades he has got during schooling in language, basic science and social science courses. They are selecting an assistant professor and not a school teacher. 

At our university, selection for faculty jobs is more about what you have taught or published, than your grades.

When employers do not know the applicants, the only "best" information is the grades they obtained in school and uni. The grade is a proxy of being “domesticated” -- willing to put in effort and be obedience, like an ox strapped to a grindstone. These are personal qualities employers look for.

I do not think that grades at school & university are highly reliable in evaluating the students of today. At the present time, there are school & university students who master the "art" of cheating during written exams so that no keen invigilator(s) can catch them red-handed! Such students can get the highest marks you can think of.

Add to the above, the fact that there are some universities which give easy exams which end up with "unreasonable" high grades.

In my humble opinion, a student (who wants to join postgraduate studies or a graduating student who seeks a job) must be subjected to an interview & to an oral exam. The examining board must be composed of 3 -5 experienced intellectuals or scholars. Also, the student must hand 3 recommendation letters from his/her previous teachers. The board is assumed to read these letters before testing the student. This way, there will be more assurance that the student is suitable or not in a scientific manner.

There should be balance between grades and teaching and service experiences as we live and work in a highly collaborative and technological environment. I know from experience those academics who "never" left school tend to be less open to thinking outside the box and follow their own "rubric" for getting the job done, which also includes "acidic" e-mails and phone conversations.

Best,

Debra

It is a way of selecting candidates with relevance to their competencies; seems to be an effective solution that makes it possible to compare subjects without claiming to be the best or the only one ... but recommended by previous experiences.

I would also add that in some cases (eg Teacher Training) there are governmental policies in place, at least in the UK, which dictate that you have to pass certain subjects with a specified level of competence before you can enroll on certain programmes of study.