The U of T Scarborough campus recently passed the option of the credit/no credit application to courses. UTSC students at can now have the option of taking a course without it affecting their GPAs and without the added pressures of doing well in it.
The UTSC administration believes that this option allows students to take more risks and experiment with their learning technique, as it will encourage them to take courses outside their program of study.
With this new policy, when taking a course, students are required to attain a minimum of 60% as their final mark to pass a class and receive a course credit. Failure to achieve a final mark of 60% will not be counted as a failure on the student’s transcript, and will not affect their cumulative GPA score.
The credit/no credit option must be chosen by a student before the final day of course enrollment. Once chosen, the option is irreversible. A course chosen as a non-credit course cannot be used to fulfill program requirements. Furthermore, professors are not told which students are taking their course for credit and which are not. This allows students to work without worrying about a bias from professors or TAs in terms of grading.
Currently, the credit/no credit option is limited to one credit per year. Executives for the Arts and Science Students’ Union are working to push for two course equivalents for the no credit option.
“It took a little while for students to grasp a couple of its features, that they couldn’t switch back if they were getting 51 per cent or 90 per cent, and that they shouldn’t be using this to avoid a non-stellar mark in one of their hard program-requirement courses,” said Assistant Dean of the Arts and Science Faculty Glenn Loney in an interview with The Varsity last week.
The St. George campus carried the credit/no credit option over in 2008 for Arts and Science students, but UTM has yet to follow suit.
