What does it mean when professors don’t grade their own assignments?

Western Governors University hires outside graders to grade assignments. Ideally this will let professors focus on their teaching and free professors from the pressure to inflate grades. The idea of letting outsiders grade assignments really cuts to the two things that colleges do for students. People know that colleges teach students, but colleges also certify their students. Colleges certify that their students are smart, hard-working, and have the perseverance to complete something that takes four years.

That certification means something to employers. Why do employers want college graduates? Is it because employers want people who took English literature and art history? Maybe. I think that there are benefits to those liberal arts courses, but a big reason that employers prefer college graduates is that college grads have been certified by their university as being good. The certification is more valuable when the school has a better name and the major is a tough one.

When professors don’t do the grading, what message does that send to employers? Does it say that the school is really serious about teaching and avoiding grade inflation? Or does it say that the school doesn’t think its own faculty are competent to do the grading? Certification from a school that doesn’t trust its faculty can’t be very valuable.

If a school’s faculty can’t be trusted to avoid grade inflation, how good can the faculty’s certification really be?

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Professors Cede Grading Power to Outsiders—Even Computers

One college gives the job to software, while another employs independent 'evaluators'

http://chronicle.com/article/Professors-Cede-Grading-Power/128528/