Most of us have received those letters, indicating that some learners will require special accommodations. And students learn to fit the description. Reminds me of those learners in my classes who expressed surprise at obtaining a high grade on an assignment.

For instance, a musician in my ethnomusicology course, back in 2006, came to me with something of a complaint:

You gave me an A on this assignment!

Right. What's the problem?

I have a learning disability!

Erm... Not in my course, you don't! ;-)

Students like this musician had done exactly the work required to fulfill the requirements... which didn't match expected requirements (which are overwhelmingly scriptocentric).

Conversely, some learners assume they'll always get good grades ("I'm an A student!"), typically because their writing style matches academic expectations.

Surely, there's research on this labelling effect. Now, I'm not saying that it's the only effect coming from these letters (or from "dean's lists"). Accommodations can be particularly important in courses where there's a pressure to perform in a certain way. And it sounds like grade-based rewards are important in several social systems. I'm merely thinking of links between Howie Becker's best-known book and his unsung work.

Oh? Credentials going Semantic? CBE going TBL?

Might be worth a deeper discussion with @jeffgrann, at some point.

Though it came out a few years after the texts listed in the previous paragraph, Randall Collins’s Credential Society would be relevant.

Grades are often an obstacle to learning.

In the Ivory Tower, we hear less about that part of the relationship between Higher Ed. and businesses. Those colleagues of ours who are so against the 100-year push for universities to become more vocational tend to assume that employers are the ones doing the pushing. While it’s quite possible that some managers wish for universities to produce optimised employees, many people on that side of the equation argue that they’re quite able to train employees, as long as they’re able to learn. Now, there’s a whole thing about the “talent pipeline” which might get faculty in a tizzy. But it’s not about moulding learners into employees. Like much of Higher Ed., it’s about identifying (and labeling) people who conform to a certain set of standards. Not less problematic, perhaps, but not so much of a distinction between academia and employability.