Recently, an online petition has been circulating the University of Florida community imploring the university to transition to pass/fail as a result of recent changes to the curriculum due to COVID-19.
Many students who have signed the petition believe beating the pandemic as a community should be our first priority and their grades should not be punished as a result of that.
Others may not even have a home to go back to, which would impose additional anxiety and stress on top of their worries about classes; not every student is privileged with the necessary resources to finish the year strongly given the situation.
Undoubtedly, such stressors and difficult situations will have a significant effect on students’ academic performance.
Here are the reasons listed in the petition for why the university should consider adjusting to this new grade system:
1. Help reduce the stress that many students are already experiencing from sudden travel, such as the anxiety and distress that students may have felt while trying to purchase plane or train tickets, checking in luggage, the act of packing to go home, etc. Students who have left Florida but have returned to states with a high number of COVID-19 cases, such as California or New York, are likely still experiencing stress, knowing that their community is at risk.
2. Personal difficulties: time zones, internet access and/or connection, possibly unstable homes, having to take care of family members. Unexpected barriers that low-income students may experience at home. These points are expanded below:
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Time zone difference will affect a student’s ability to operate and/or even attend class. Some students had 7 AM classes; if they had to go to the West Coast, that class would now be a 4 AM. For international students, classes could be held in the middle of the night. Inconvenient timing of classes will undoubtedly affect their academic performance.
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If a family member becomes sick, how will a student focus on their studies? We should be prioritizing the health and status of our community over grades at this moment.
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With the many businesses closing down (bars and restaurants), student-workers are not making money; what if this was a source of income that they or their family needed desperately?
3. For those out-of-state students that have stayed in Gainesville, many are staying because it is too expensive to fly back and/or they are concerned about the health and safety of their family
4. Online instruction is incomparable to the experience and learning that one may have in the class and during in-person lectures; although many students may transition seamlessly to learning online, there will be an indisputable part of our student body that will face difficulties in focusing and/or truly understanding class material.
It is important to consider the situations of students who are struggling with the uncertainty and severity of the COVID-19 situation, especially those who do not have a home to go back to because of personal or safety reasons.
While students are thankful to the university for considering their health by transitioning to online instruction, they also offered up this solution which they claim will help alleviate the additional stress imposed on students.
However, while the petition was made with good intentions for students who are currently suffering because of COVID-19, it has also raised some concerns among students who plan on applying to graduate or professional school after graduation, specifically pre-med students.
While professional healthcare schools are sensitive to the COVID-19 situation and understand that courses are online at the moment, they will still want to see grades in the prerequisite courses.
Grades are a more finite demonstration of the prospective applicant’s proficiency in the subjects in comparison to the broad range of the pass/fail system. Additionally, pass/fail grades will not compute into the science/math GPA.
Pre-med students have raised their concerns about the pass/fail system.
Specifically, the problem with pass/fail grades not computing into their GPA.
Their GPA is one of the most crucial aspects of a medical school application.
As mentioned before, medical schools want to see excellence in math and science courses, which can be easily identified in a letter grade system.
In a letter grade system, a C is still considered passing even though it’s lower than an A, but at least admissions officers will be able to determine the level of proficiency the applicant is at in a certain subject.
On the other hand, a pass/fail grade is too broad of a range to determine proficiency.
For a career that is as rigorous and knowledgeable as medicine, it is extremely vital for medical schools to choose the best and the brightest out of the applicant pool because the people of everyday life need the best doctors to not only take care of them, but to do it well.
Pre-med students are not the only people who might suffer as a result of making classes pass/fail.
Students in general who need GPA boosters to meet graduation, scholarship, and other professional thresholds truly need the grading system to remain as it is.
Many students believe they worked too hard, for whatever goal they’re working towards, to make the semester pass/fail and they want their performance to show on their GPA.
Some even believe that the system proposed encourages students to slack and discourages most from trying.
In uncertain situations like the one the world is facing today, these kinds of decisions are extremely difficult to make, considering both sides have valid reasons to want a certain action to take place.
While one half of the student population are suffering as a result of the changes caused by COVID-19 and may need a pass/fail system to relieve some of their stress, the other half is begging to keep the grading system as it is because they do not want their hard work thrown out of the window and need to have the grades to show for it.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution that will make everyone happy but if the university is unable to solve these concerns on a case-by-case basis, then either issuing a school-wide curve on grades or reducing the severity of penalties on grades would be the fairest option for everyone.