As some professors begin to hold their first round of tests for the spring semester, other classrooms are beginning to open up Google Docs and start working on group projects. The group leader sends out an email, inviting other members of the group to join the Doc. Two or three group members accept the invite within the first day and the final member won’t open it until the first group meeting.

He or she will show up to that first group meeting about 10 minutes late, already showing the characteristics of “that one person” who gets by on the work of others in the group.

Does this situation sound familiar?

While some group projects can be very helpful to learning in a classroom, more times than not group characters are formed within the first five minutes of the first meeting between the parties. Leadership characteristics will form around one person who is punctual, organized and doesn’t mind doing a little more work than the rest of the group to ensure professionalism and perfection in the final project. Group projects, sometimes, sound like a pretty “easy A.” We can all divide the work of what one person could do in a four-page paper and that “assigned time outside of class for group work” will most likely be spent sleeping in or binge watching the latest season of “Friends” on Netflix.

The division of labor in a group project will never cut evenly for all members. This fact ensures that no matter the effort put into the final result, the students will have gained an unequal — and in many cases ineffective — understanding of the assignment. Even the most optimistic assumptions about each group member’s work ethic inevitably leave room for systematic inequalities. The group project concept may be a slacker’s dream, but it is not an accurate representation of each student’s knowledge.

Carnegie Mellon University’s website states that “group projects can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world,” such as learning the values of team building and understanding the frustrations that can come along with group work. While it is true that the “small world” nature of the global community is turning the workplace into an entirely collaborative experience, there is an obvious and important difference between the two settings.

Namely, if the group member fails in their responsibilities for a class project, they may be given a negative peer review, but ultimately they’ll receive a similar if not identical overall grade. However, if that person plays the same games in the workplace, they’ll find themselves looking for a new job.

The workplace setting also brings with it the implied personal interest and investment of the project’s success. This assumption does not hold true for class work. The nature of college courses — at least at the lower class levels — are not tailored to student interests, but rather to university requirements. When a student doesn’t have an interest in the work, the quality of that work will suffer and so too will the grades of their potentially more motivated classmates.

Classes that currently place significant value on group work would be better served by changing to a personal assignment format. Not only would professors gain a more accurate understanding of each student’s abilities, but the shift would also spare diligent students the anxiety of doing the work of three or four students.