One student kept the A while groupmates lost marks and even a scholarship after allegedly contributing nothing to a major project.
A university student’s decision to report their own groupmates after allegedly completing a major assignment alone has triggered debate online over fairness, accountability and whether struggling students should still be protected from the consequences of doing no work.
The discussion began on Threads after @best_of__web shared their experience of working on a four-person group project worth 40% of the final grade.
According to the post, the student had effectively been completing the assignment alone since the second week of the semester.
“I was doing everything — research, slides, speaker notes,” the user wrote, claiming their teammates contributed little beyond replying “sounds good” in group chats while failing to complete actual tasks.
The student said they kept records throughout the semester, including unread messages, empty contribution logs and written warnings sent to the rest of the group. Despite the imbalance, the project still received an A.
After the assignment was submitted, the student reportedly sent all the documentation to the professor and requested individual grading instead of a shared mark.
“I kept my A. Two dropped to Cs. The third? Their grade dropped below the threshold and they’re losing their scholarship,” the post read.
The situation quickly drew reactions from others who said they had experienced similar problems with group assignments.
User @jaynehemerley defended the student’s decision, writing: “You didn’t do this. They chose it, over and over and over.”
Others argued that the scholarship issue was likely linked to wider academic problems.
User @mccallum.julia commented that “one class is not enough to lose a scholarship over”, suggesting the failed project may not have been the student’s only issue.
Some responses came from people who said they had previously dealt with plagiarism or disappearing teammates during university projects.
User @joyfulnerdgirl recalled excluding a plagiarised section from a graduate school paper after a group member refused to rewrite it, saying the student was eventually removed from the programme.
Another user, @psychobabbleratlarge, who identified themselves as a professor, shared that they once completed almost an entire online group assignment after another student “went radio silent”, resulting in them receiving 99% while the other person failed.
User @doctorsailorgurl63, who claimed to be a retired professor, also supported the student, saying too many people “ride on the coattails of others” during collaborative assignments.
