The Chronicle of Higher Education: Colloquy

COLLOQUY

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Perhaps the previous poster has never faced a student who, point-blank, states, "I need an A to keep my scholarship," but as a composition instructor, I did... too frequently. As a rule, I found that students weren't shy about pointing out their "need" in discussions of grades. Granted, these discussions would be harder to have in the hard sciences, but in a humanities discipline, certainly there is pressure to inflate grades -- from above and below.

Does that mean, however, that scholarship eligibility should not be tied to grades? Absolutely not.

Grades are, whether we would have it be so or not, the only real measure of a student's progress (or lack thereof) in college. To renew scholarships without regard for satisfactory academic progress would be far more unfair than to continue, as we always have, requiring that such gifts be used mindfully and responsibly.

-- Denise Bryson, currently unaffiliated (posted 11/4, 3:25 p.m., E.S.T.)
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