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<p>There is a difference between ‘rigorous’ and ‘cutthroat’. Cutthroat implies highly negative, social suboptimal behavior. For example, intentionally telling other students wrong information so that they get a test question wrong. Hiding library books or tearing pages out of library course materials so that other students can’t read them so that they get lower grades on the exam. Going to the bin where course homeworks are submitted and throwing away other student’s homework sets so that they get zeros (which therefore lowers the curve). That is cutthroat behavior that I don’t think has a place in any academic environment.</p>
<p>It also encourages the ‘gaming’ of grades. For example, a cutthroat environment simply encourages people to take extremely easy courses and/or courses on things that they already know, just so that they can rack up a bunch of easy A’s. I know a guy at Berkeley who was completely fluent in a certain foreign language, but took all of the intro courses in that language anyway, simply because he knew it would give him a string of easy A’s. He actually pretended to the prof that he knew nothing about the language. That is the sort of gamesmanship that cutthroatness encourages. Students begin to value high grades more than they value learning. That guy didn’t learn anything in those language courses that he didn’t already know. But he didn’t care, because all he wanted were the A’s.</p>