Keep running to stay at the same place…

The GPA race is as thrilling as GTA! Well, not quite. But it does give rise to interesting situations and diverse emotions. After all, in the current scheme of things, grading is relative. So all that matters is where you stand relative to your classmates.

Intuitively it might seem that the best way to handle this in the interest of the overall batch is to ensure that no one studies for the exams. However, can each student trust the others not to study? What if someone breaks the “agreed code” and studies secretly? Given the two situations that the others might study or may not study, it might seem to a random student that studying is the safer strategy. At least he won’t be left stranded at the lower end of the GPA spectrum and well, there is this chance of actually doing well in the exams! Now everyone might think this way and end up studying thereby eliminating any relative advantage of studying that any one might have. What we have is Prisoners’ Dilemma in the academic setting in a new multi-player avatar.

Can “collusion” be implemented to solve the problems arising out of, let me dare term it – Students’ Dilemma? The problems are many: How to monitor effort? How to design a “punishment” for detractors to deter them from “cheating” (which ironically, in this context means studying!)? How to ensure that a student doesn’t get mistakenly punished for doing well in the exam by chance or by sheer ability? And the questions continue…

Consider a hypothetical scenario where students to agree to spend a specific and significant amount of time in the common area everyday so everyone watches over the other. Students can choose to watch movies or play games and everyone gets to watch what the others are doing. This will leave a reduced time for any prospective “cheater” to study extra in his/her own time. Ideally the system should be monitored by a third party, but what option do we have in this case? The teachers supervising students to ensure they don’t study enough? This doesn’t seem to be a feasible idea.

Social ostracism can be a potential punishment, but the Chatur Ramalingams of the world wouldn’t care. And if one person “cheats” or defects this way, then others also have an increased incentive to study.

It seems that we are stuck with the best response strategy of putting in significant efforts in studying after all. And anyway, if we agree on studying being a means to learning and not merely grades then the equilibrium where everyone ends up studying a lot, isn’t at all undesirable.

So, get back to your books.

As Groucho Marx said, “Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”

"I would have loved to do it, but..."

How many times have you mentally cursed your project team member for not putting in the required effort? And how many times has the feeling been mutual? Well, there is no end to this argument as “effort” in most of the cases is not directly observable.

In general we can say that free riding happens in groups due to the presence of people whose pay-off matrices look somewhat like this:

Hence (goof-off, goof-off) seems to be the Nash equilibrium in such a situation. How do projects get done then? I’d say that’s due to the presence of members whose pay-off matrix looks different from this perhaps because of behavioural reasons. Those persons would perhaps derive “utility” out of moral, responsible behavior. However, designing a free-riding proof system will have to concern with the “problem children”, not the ethically high people. The solutions will either have to increase the pay-off for working hard or decrease the pay-offs for goofing off. Both can be approached by steps taken at

1            1. The group level itself amongst the members

2            2. Institutionalizing some mechanisms

1.  At the group level, before every project meeting, each one can be asked to come prepared with a write-up covering the problem issues and suggested solutions. The meeting can then be used to discuss and filter solutions rather than briefing the unprepared ones by the prepared ones. This will also ensure some sort of a peer pressure for everyone to put in some work.  Is this step alone sufficient? Perhaps not.

Hence, we have to look at an agreed protocol for all group projects:

2. At the closure of every project, there should be a peer-review of every group member and the report confidentially submitted to the Professor. This process should be officially implemented at the institute level. More than the actual content of the peer-feedback and resultant grades, the fact that every member knows he is going to be individually appraised, will make him/her more productive.

This is of course only one possible theoretical solution. How it plays out in real life will have a lot of other direct and contextual variables moderating the situation.