(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Western Oregon University leaders have announced plans to abolish D- and F grades for students because of “GPA fixation.”
The university officials added that they will replace them with “no credit” to support student success and encourage undergraduate students who are struggling academically to continue their education, according to the College Fix.
In this month’s news release, the university announced that the new grading system would be implemented this fall.
“Students not earning a passing grade will be required to repeat the course and demonstrate proficiency. Our goal is to ensure that students who have met the core competencies and learning objectives graduate and provide every student an opportunity to be successful at Western Oregon University,” Vice President of Academic Affairs Jose Coll said.
In the news release, Coll, who took the job as provost in June 2023, said that “GPAs will now be a true reflection of student success and course mastery [and] failures will no longer mask the demonstrated abilities of our students when they pass courses.”
“[The] institutional academic grading regulation will reflect a grade range of A through D. The letter grades of D- and F will be replaced with No Credit (NC) for undergraduate students. The difference is that the grade of NC will not negatively impact student GPAs,” the news release said.
In an email to the College Fix, Coll also pushed back against those who opposed the recent decision of the woke institution.
“The GPA fixation we have as a country and the grading system that’s been in place for over 200 years has been used to determine who belongs and who is capable, although we know that similar to the SAT and ACT, many capable students have been prohibited from pursuing their post-secondary education due to these barriers,” he said.
The center-right Oregon Association of Scholars, a branch of the National Association of Scholars, pushed back against the narrative by saying that the policy raises “several concerns.”
“Students deserve the opportunity to try, to push themselves and to fail. They have the right to be treated like adults, the right to fail and to learn from it. What they take away from that experience should be up to them to work out, not something framed up for them by college administrators to mask their problems with student retention and performance,” the statement said.
