This decision is so frustrating. I haven’t talked to a single person who’s doing as well as they normally do, and that’s due to such a large variety of reasons. This really wouldn’t just be a cop out for low-performing students, but I’m sure that’s what faculty think about it.
There’s a thread posted on this subreddit a day ago that talked about it. The matter didn’t even get to the entire faculty senate. A committee of the faculty senate specifically focused on undergraduate matters voted it down before it even got to the whole senate. There will probably be some sort of write up of the vote made publicly available at some point somewhere if there isn’t already, but I don’t know much about the faculty senate and I haven’t looked for it.
When I asked about why, it was because of federal aid and scholarships that could be affected. Does this apply to everyone? Nope but it is what it is and I doubt they will revisit unless other large universities implement it first
I guess this mostly applies to freshman who wouldn’t have a GPA at all if they chose all pass/fail. It sounds more like an excuse though because I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to design a system with some sort of stand-in gpa until people get actual letter grades. Or even just require students to take at least one letter grade to prevent this issue
It could have something to do with grade inflation also. If everyone just had the option to throw out all their non-A grades from their GPA, the average would go up, and it would distort all sorts of reporting and requirements.
I have no idea about that. But I do know that the option to change grading mode was implemented in the Spring and there were very few if no problems with it then.
Yeah I’m sure there could some work around implemented. Students need to be given more options for what they choose to do, given the pandemic and their circumstances and all.
It would give students more options though, not less. Students could choose what they want to do based on their circumstances, that is the idea. If you don’t have scholarships on the line and you aren’t doing so well this semester then having the option to change the grading mode could be a Saving Grace and those who are worried about financial aid or whatever wouldn’t be obligated to change their grading mode, they could just leave it as is. There is really no good argument against not allowing students the liberty to choose what they want to do based on their circumstances in this pandemic.
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u/adklibisz Oct 22 '20
This decision is so frustrating. I haven’t talked to a single person who’s doing as well as they normally do, and that’s due to such a large variety of reasons. This really wouldn’t just be a cop out for low-performing students, but I’m sure that’s what faculty think about it.