Repeat/delete policy bolsters GPA

Students at Colorado State University will soon have the opportunity to repeat courses in an effort to earn better grades thanks to a new repeat/delete policy adopted by the school last week.

In a near-unanimous vote last Tuesday, the CSU Faculty Council decided students will be able to repeat up to nine credit hours. According to the policy, the grades for both classes will appear on the transcript, but only the mark in the repeated course will be used in calculating the student’s grade point average — regardless of whether the mark is higher or lower than the initial grade.

“A repeat/delete policy should help all students who want to invest the time and effort required to master course material,” said Bill Timpson of the CSU Committee on Teaching and Learning told the Rocky Mountain Collegian. The policy “is a bit of a safety net” meant to catch students who suffer through adversity during their academic career and those who struggle with the transition from high school to college.

According to Susan Jackson, senior associate dean of Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, a policy similar to the repeat/delete guidelines already exists at BU.

“[College of Arts and Sciences] students may repeat a course, but — except in rare cases of topics or directed study courses where the retake involves entirely different course content — will receive credit only once. … Both grades appear on the transcript, and [unlike at CSU] both are computed into the student’s grade point average.”

However, Jackson also noted there are only two circumstances in which a repeated class would make sense to CAS students: a course that is required for a student’s major concentration, which must be completed with the departmentally prescribed minimum grade, or, a course that fulfills the basic competence requirement in English composition.

Some CSU Council members are concerned with the policy’s effect on academic standards. Professor Richard Ecykolt, an opponent of the policy, told the Collegian the policy opens a new loophole instead of working to close an already existing one: students will take the same 100 level courses in an effort to pad their GPA.

Jackson said there are no plans in CAS to institute a repeat/delete policy like the one at CSU.

“There are sounder ways than by artificially inflating grade point averages to provide opportunities for improvement on past performance and, more generally, to support the real academic development, success and self-confidence [of college students],” she added.

Existing programs at BU including academic advising, a variety of tutoring options, and places such as the University Resource Center and the numerous writing centers on campus are “attentive to variability in students’ prior preparation” and reflect strong commitment on the part of faculty members to meet each student’s goals, according to Jackson.

She believes students should be guided and supported in learning how to make the most productive use of their time in each course rather “than that they should become dependent on the kind of retakes that later life will not reward.”