Western Oregon University Adopts New Grading System

[LevelUP]

Western Oregon University Adopts New Grading System

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/busi...ing-system


Interesting points from the article:

• Over 65 percent of freshmen who had dropped out in the past five years had earned an F in their first quarter.
  
  
• About 40.4 million people, or 12 percent of Americans, have some college credit but didn’t earn a degree or certificate.
  
  
• Around 80% of Yale's grades were either A's or A-'s
  

I'm in favor of grade inflation since everyone else is doing it. 

Why not take advantage of it, especially if you can be discriminated against for having a low GPA?

[Duneranger]

I played sports against WOU in college. Monmouth is a nice little town!

[bluebooger]

grade everyone pass or fail
its the DEI thing to do ... wait, we should probably get rid of "fail"
everybody passes

[fmsoa]

Western Oregon University Adopts New Grading System

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/busi...ing-system


Interesting points from the article:

• Over 65 percent of freshmen who had dropped out in the past five years had earned an F in their first quarter.
  
  
• About 40.4 million people, or 12 percent of Americans, have some college credit but didn’t earn a degree or certificate.
  
  
• Around 80% of Yale's grades were either A's or A-'s
  

I'm in favor of grade inflation since everyone else is doing it. 

Why not take advantage of it, especially if you can be discriminated against for having a low GPA?

I disagree. imo it's just another marketing scheme. If WOU really cares about the 40% graduation rate and 'F' stigma, they can either go CBE or be like TECEP where transcripts won't even show a failed test score. And you think HR can't see through NCR=fail? Plus almost all colleges had policy that if you retake a failed class the new grade would replace the failed grade in GPA calculation, which is a good sign of resilience against adversity.

Again if these bureaucrats really care about students quitting schools after failing a class, should they offer one-price-till-pass guarantee or partial refund bonus for students getting it done first time around? All this school wants is if a student fails a class come back to repeat with us. It's all about extracting the last penny out of struggling students.

I know WOU is just 30 minutes away from OSU and only 70 miles from UO so competition for students is fierce. But I'm really disappointed that these highly-paid administrators can't even be a little more creative and innovative. Just take a look at Oregon State and they are such pioneer in online education. 

WOU can be bold but they choose just to be gimmicky

[bjcheung77]

Grade inflation is an issue, not all institutions are actually actively working on resolving things... Most institutions large or small will come across this. I think for most institutions, they can incorporate the CBE or pass/fail options into their classes, or adopt the 'graduate' level type of grading where nothing lower than a B will be acceptable (which they have set with the A-B's you see here), but what I would say is, they need to actively score at an A-B level through all types of exams, midterms, assignments, projects, whatever else, an actual cumulative score. No discrimination, no inflation, nothing of that sort should happen...

[Jonathan Whatley]

I disagree. imo it's just another marketing scheme. If WOU really cares about the 40% graduation rate and 'F' stigma, they can either go CBE or be like TECEP where transcripts won't even show a failed test score.

In WOU's partial defense, 

• going full CBE while still offering federal financial aid would require enormous administrative contortions and lengthy accreditor and federal reviews and approvals, and could unintentionally shut out some types of students. For example, there's no possibility of someone taking half a full-time credit load for half full-time tuition at a subscription-priced CBE program like WGU. But some people will want to take a half credit load for half full-time tuition at a regional B&M like WOU.
  
• federal financial aid isn't permitted for TECEPs.
  

This is a smaller reform, but they can accomplish this quickly.

[LevelUP]

I like the idea of CBE since if you struggle in a class such as Calculus, you can only focus on that one class for as long as it takes to pass the course. This helps students who are trying to juggle working a full-time job and school at the same time.

Offering extra credit might be another option.

Employers can't judge the skills someone has by their grades alone. So putting too much value on grades doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[fmsoa]

I like the idea of CBE since if you struggle in a class such as Calculus, you can only focus on that one class for as long as it takes to pass the course. This helps students who are trying to juggle working a full-time job and school at the same time.

Offering extra credit might be another option.

Employers can't judge the skills someone has by their grades alone. So putting too much value on grades doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Great idea. CBE for Gen Ed/core courses and grades for AOS and major-related classes. This way many students would be able to take 18-21 cr a semester and graduate in 2-3 years. But it will never happen at establishment colleges because 1/3 of your college bill goes to various administrative fees and those top bureaucrats need your hard-earned money to live large and hang out with wealthy alum donors

[ArielB74]

Bad idea. There should be consequences for failing a class...

[ss20ts]

Bad idea.  There should be consequences for failing a class...

There are! The grade is forever on your transcript. According to the article, over 60% of students who receive a failing grade in their first semester leave college. That's a pretty big consequence. Many are also stuck with student loans.