Graduation Requirements
From SPSU Wiki
Dear Colleagues,
As you know, the Faculty Senate and the Student Status Committee held an open forum on our graduation requirements yesterday. About a dozen faculty attended, and an interesting and lively discussion took place. The main topic was SPSU's graduation requirements, namely those which are in excess of the "standard" requirements of passing all courses in the major, and having an overall 2.0 G.P.A. It may interest you to know that more than 20 programs at SPSU have requirements in excess of the the standard. One of the most common versions of these additional standards is the requirement that a grade of "C" must be earned in every course in the major.
The main argument against having these "additional standards" is that they stop students from progressing to graduation. Within a week of my arriving at SPSU, I had already met no fewer than five senior students who had appropriate GPA's and had passed all major courses, but could not graduate because they had earned a "D" in a course during their last semester. Many other students never get that far--they give up much earlier. This is part of the reason that our graduation rate is only 23%. This type of policy makes any individual course in the major an additional impediment toward graduation.
The obvious reason in favor of "additional standards" is that they ensure that only well-qualified students will be able to graduate. "Would you like a student who got a "D" designing a bridge you need to cross?" went a common argument. How do we ensure that our students have the knowledge they need in the key areas in order to function well as professionals, while at the same time not put too many roadblocks on their path to graduation? This is the conundrum.
During our discussion, a number of important points were raised. We discussed the meaning of the grades "D" and "C". Our catalog defines "D" as "poor" and "C" as average. It was suggested that perhaps a better definition, more in line with Board of Regents Policy would be:
- D--Meeting minimum acceptable standards in the course
- C--Meeting average acceptable standards in the course
If this definition was upheld, if a student passed every course, they would have at least met minimum acceptable standards in all major courses, and met average acceptable standards on average.
Some participants argued that there are some courses that are so important, a "D" isn't good enough. Shouldn't programs be able to designate at least a few courses as requiring a minimum of a "C"?
Most participants agreed that we needed a single University policy--it was not a good idea for each department to have its own graduation policies.
There seemed to be concensus at the end (I hope I'm not over-reading it)around a sample policy something like the following:
"In order to graduate in any program at SPSU, a student must have a minimum 2.0 overall G.P.A. and an overall 2.1 G.P.A. in major courses. Programs can designate up to 2 courses that require a minimum of a "C" grade for graduation."
Is this a policy that all departments could accept as appropriate? Please post your comments and let us know.
