Students now must get at least C for credit/no credit

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The Academic Senate voted Tuesday to change the credit/no credit policy — raising the grade required to receive credit from a C- to a C.

Degrees, Admissions, Standards, Honors committee made the recommendations for change based on two years of research.

“With the credit/no credit policy, there is a concern that too many classes are being taken for credit/no credit, leading to an inflation in grades and students who aren’t engaged in classes,” said JoAnn Linrud, marketing and hospitality services administration chairwoman during a presentation to the A-Senate.

“Specifically, we looked at several questions,” Linrud said.

“Are there courses offered as credit/no credit given that almost all of the students in the class get As, and do students understand the reason for the credit/no credit option?”

Linrud cited evidence that CMU and other institutions have researched before she made a recommendation.

“Overall, this change in policy would affect fewer than five students per year and will lead to students choosing this option for more appropriate reasons,” Linrud said.

The motion was approved by the Academic Senate after heated debate, with 17 members of the council opposing the motion.

“I feel that it’s a poor policy because students aren’t aware of the implications of the policy,” said Robert Newby, sociology, anthropology and social work professor.

“Students can get a D- and get credit in a course, but if you take credit/no credit, you can’t get credit if you receive a C- or below,” he said. “People don’t understand this policy and haven’t been advised on it.”

Newby also feels the policy discourages student exploration of different courses.

“The whole reason this policy exists is so that students can explore different academic areas and do so without penalty. This policy discourages exploration,” Newby said.

Linrud argued that the gap is appropriate because of the way that the university calculates GPAs.

“If you get a D-, you pass, but that is factored into your GPA. If you take a course credit/no credit and even if you don’t get credit, it isn’t factored into the GPA,” Linrud said.

DASH also recommended the individual departments consider capping the number of credit/no credit courses allowed in a major or minor, and recommended that the A-Senate change courses with students receiving mostly A’s to credit/no credit only.

The A-Senate also approved a policy placing a cap on the number of credit hours an undergraduate student can take to 21, but left an option to the deans of the student’s departments to approve students taking more.

“Some students can take 21 credits or more and do well, and this exception allows for those students to be able to take more if they wish,” Linrud said.

The A-Senate introduced the cap after concern was raised that students were taking too many credit hours to have sufficient time to spend on individual classes.

An additional policy which would involve changing the honors recognition policy was sent back to DASH for further research.

“There is concern that honors requirements are so low that students who do not warrant it are being recognized,” Linrud said.

Linrud cited statistics that said 11.5 percent of students received honors in the 1990-91 school year compared with 26.8 percent in 2001-02.

The policy would have raised the GPA requirements for both the graduation honors and the Dean’s List candidates.

DASH was given the task of exploring the possibility of changing the policy to one that is based on the top percentages of students, similar to the program at University of Michigan.

Jim Scott, chairman of Academic Senate, said he wasn’t surprised by the amount of heated discussion involved in making the decisions.

“If students aren’t happy with the policy, they can contact their student senators and discuss their concerns with them,” Scott said.

“We have been talking about this stuff for the last two years, but some of the changes won’t be implemented for a while,” he said.