A typical decision that is made to make the life of the administration easy in spite of the fact that the student is not well served.

Robert Wildblood, at 7:10 am EDT on August 3, 2007

Withdrawing vs. Dropping

On the contrary, I teach at state schools in Connecticut where students ridiculously take advantage of withdrawal policies. The community college where I teach allows students to withdraw three weeks before the term ends, without cause, which students regularly do when they’re not seeing the grade they want, usually because they have been wasting my time and theirs most of the term by not doing the work. The average English classes of 25 students end with 15 or fewer in the CC, while the state universities are seeing an increasing number of students who fail to complete their courses due to a lack of responsibility, rarely external circumstances. It’s about time that contemporary college students started realizing that higher education is a privilege AND a commitment. Laws to enforce that perception seem necessary for the present generation, so here’s to hoping that they make their way to Connecticut and nationally soon!

Professor DLM, at 8:10 am EDT on August 3, 2007

Course Selection

I disagree with the comment above that students would not be well served by a cap on the number of courses that they are allowed to drop during the course of a degree. If students are conscious of a cap it will compel them to think more carefully about the courses that they select and should foster an environment in which they are better engaged with their studies. However, it is incumbent upon faculty to make their syllabus and assessment guidelines available to students before a semester begins. This would facilitate better student choices.

Carl Watts, Dr at Indiana University — Purdue University Fort Wayne, at 8:35 am EDT on August 3, 2007

The real problem is the DWI Index

It’s not the drop/adds that cause student problems as much as policies concerning (a) no-penalty Withdrawals after the drop/add censoring date, and (b) no-credit repeats. In the U.S. Department of Education’s transcript-based longitudinal studies, the grades accompanying such phenomena—-which I used to call the “DWI Index"—-now account for 8+ percent of all grades, up from 4 percent in the 1972-84 period. My analyses have shown that when the proportion of such grades in a student’s record reaches 20 percent the probability of finishing a degree plummets by 50 percent, controlling for high school record, SES, timing of college entry, first year performance, non-continuous enrollment, various types of multi-institutional attendance, summer term credits, trend in GPA, etc.

There are two other aspects of this phenomenon worth noting: (1) if 8 percent of all grades are “DWI” these grades are removed from the universe of judgment, thus devaluing the balance of the grading system (in fact, what we have witnessed is not “grade inflation” but “grade devaluation” over the past 30 years; and (2) that 8 percent means 8 percent of seats wasted, blocking access and chewing up the same proportion of instructional budgets. One can say that no-credit repeats are justifiable custom-and-usage in remedial courses, but when you also see them in volume in such courses as Pre-Calc, Intro to Accounting, U.S. history surveys, General Chemistry, Intro to Business, and Logic, then they carry messages about poor advisement across the board.

Clifford Adelman, Senior Associate at Institute for Higher Education Policy, at 9:40 am EDT on August 3, 2007

Drops

In full sections, it’s true that “shoppers” somtimes occupy seats that sincere students could have used. However, sometimes those shoppers help a course section to remain alive when an institution has a minimum required enrollment. A shopper might save a section from being cancelled and help those students who want to take an obscure topic or one offered at an unpopular time.

Joyce, at 9:40 am EDT on August 3, 2007

Students are only part of the problem

I wonder what other approaches to solving this problem have been tried in the state of Texas. Before they decided to legislate an arbitrary number of “allowed” drops for students, did they try to improve the quality of advising so that students have more assistance in choosing the right courses and majors? Did they try to improve instructional practices so students become more engaged in classes and therefore less interested in dropping the class? Did they interview students in a systematic way to try to understand why students drop classes? Did they examine the bloated curricular requirements that force students to take courses that no longer directly apply to their major or future career(s)? This seems to be an overly simplistic and arbitrary “solution” to a complex, multi-faceted problem.

T-bone, at 9:45 am EDT on August 3, 2007

Another option

There is some validity in both the pro and con comments. How about thinking up another option.

Don’t some states already cut off in-state tuition after some number of total units, to keep people from being perpetual students?

Since this issue has been brought up in the context of public institutions, where taxpayers cover a substantial share of costs, how about having the taxpayers step out after some number of drop/withdraws. To use the number in the article, after six drops/withdraws, the student pays out-of-state tuition for additional attempts at the course.

This way students could drop as many courses as they want if they are willing to pay the freight.

At the risk if adding to the controversy, we might think about adding repeats of courses to the calculation. In states with very low tuition and institutions with generous repeat-delete or repeat-recalculate policies we see students taking courses and deliberately failing if they don’t think that will get the A grade they want. They can then take the class again and get the A and have the first or first and second tries expunged from their transcript. I imagine the number of courses allowed in a drop/withdraw/repeat policy would have to be higher than six.

BChem, at 11:40 am EDT on August 3, 2007

caps on drops

One this needs to be made very clear — as a librraian AND a an instructor I have been appalled at the terrible and incomplete syllabi floating around out there — particularly in the community collges. How can students judge their predicted performance if an instructor doesn’t know where s/he is going with the curriculum till they get there? Having been a student for a long time, it was extremely important to have course syllabi that mapped out the whole course day by day and week by week, so it was explicit that the course was well organised, what was required, what the assignments were and when -the whole deal. IF one doesn’t have this, and the term & instructor muddles along indeterminately, then the student has no choice in certain situations but to drop. Of course,I’m not referring to the student who isnt’ conscientious and just drops to avoid a bad grade — but then again, what’s wrong with that? They paid for the class, so they can choose to lose the money to avoid the grade.

When the state creates law to solve an insitution’s administrative problem, it hampers the institution’s organizational flexibility.

gl clib, at 2:05 pm EDT on August 3, 2007

Course Fishing

Wouldn’t it be nice if all students actually read the syllabus?

Mike McIlvain, at 2:05 pm EDT on August 3, 2007

“I’m most bothered by the intrusion of a state law into what should be academic policy through the governance system of each institution.”

It’s not an “intrusion” when the taxpayers are pointlessly footing the bill for students who are irresponsible about their coursework.

JBM, at 4:25 pm EDT on August 3, 2007

another piece of anecdotal evidence to factor in...

I have never had a student add a course after the 1st week who actually did well [higher than a C] in the course. From my experience, I think most fishers just want a class they like and not a class that instructs, which would explain why they tend to be among the most irresponsible slackers I encounter.

This past Spring I had one guy add a required class for his major on the very last day possible. he didn’t show up until about 2 classes later and he remained an absentee student for the rest of the semester, even taking an extra week off for Spring Break! While he was the most extreme example of this I have encountered, he drove home to me the pattern I have observed for years: Fishers just don’t care as much about their education as non-fishers tend to.

TM, at 6:00 pm EDT on August 3, 2007

At UC Irvine, where all majors take the same calculus course in the math department, students drop around 6th week when they realize they aren’t going to get a high grade. That skews the curve horribly for the final exam for those remaining in the course because the lower end is no longer present. They repeat the class over and over until they can get an A on the first exams, then average that with whatever they do on the final, to get a reasonable passing grade. This is not a slacker strategy, but a way of coping with inadequate math preparation. Should students be prevented from adopting strategies that will help them do better by repeating the introductory material? In the CSU system where students are not permitted to drop late in a course, the students take the courses and get D’s or F’s, then repeat them and replace their low grades with the new higher ones. It makes the course easier to manage from the instructor’s perspective, but I’m not sure the cost to the student is any different. In both cases, the cause seems to be an inability to do well in the course, which speaks to inadequate preparation and other problems (student employment to pay costs), that will not be addressed by this kind of law, in my opinion.

Terry, at 1:20 pm EDT on August 4, 2007

Shopping

Some students will get away with whatever is possible. They learn to work the system, and work it they will.

It is unfortunate that Texas felt that a law was necessary to curb “shopping” or “fishing” for classes.

I teach at a community college in California — and “shopping” is common here. Often when they realize that college-level work is expected of them — even in ART classes, they drop.

ArtProf, at 9:15 pm EDT on August 5, 2007

.....

So exactly what happens to us if we pass the limit huh? America land of opportunity? Remember that most of the time we register for the course and come to class to find another teacher and it takes time to see that the teacher is not our style or most of us has to work or have other classes also. Its easy now to support the law now when teachers already finished their studies.

B, at 3:45 am EDT on September 12, 2007