<p>I did not personally get screwed over by Cal. While I’m not going to get into my biography, trust me, I’m perfectly fine. </p>
<p>However, I know several people who did get screwed - to the point where they either graduating with GPA’s that are so atrociously low that they basically have zero chance of ever getting into graduate school, or even worse, not even graduating. In each situation, I agree that those guys had some culpability. Sure, they weren’t as mature as they should have been. They weren’t as hard-working as they should have been. They didn’t take the kind of initiative to access resources as they should have been doing.</p>
<p>Having said that, it’s still a shame that what happened to them should have happened to them. Especially of the guys who didn’t even graduate at all, because they got put on academic probation for poor grades, found that they were unable to raise their cumulative GPA’s above a 2.0 in one semester (which is what you’re supposed to do if you land on probation), and thus found themselves expelled. Those guys would have been better off never going to Berkeley at all. Hence, Berkeley not only didn’t help them, it actually severely hurt them.</p>
<p>I think of one guy in particular who this happened to who studied EECS, which is arguably the most difficult major on campus. Believe me, it is EXTREMELY easy to end up with less than a 2.0 in EECS, even if you work extremely hard, particularly if you’re taking the weeder classes. And that’s what happened - the weeders pulled him substantially below a 2.0, and he unwisely chose another difficult courseload the following semester and was not able to pull his cum GPA above 2.0, so he got expelled. </p>
<p>And my question is, why? Allright, so he’s not cut out for Berkeley EECS. Fine. I can see him getting expelled from EECS. Fair enough. But why not let him transfer to another major at Berkeley with a clean slate? Or just let him transfer to some other school completely? The Berkeley EECS department proved its point - he’s not good enough for EECS. So why continue hassling the guy ? Why not expunge all of his bad engineering grades from his academic record, along with a notation that says that he’s no longer welcome in engineering, but still allow him to transfer over to L&S? Or give him a ‘scrubbed’ transcipt that doesn’t contain his failing engineering grades if he wants to transfer to another school? As it stands now, he can’t get a degree from Berkeley, and he can’t transfer to another decent school because no half-decent school wants to take a transfer student that flunked out of his previous school. </p>
<p>Again, I can understand that Berkeley doesn’t want to grant him an EECS degree, or any other kind of engineering degree. I can understand that. But I don’t know what the purpose is of continually hounding the guy forever. What’s so bad about letting the guy do something else with a clean slate? As it stands now, it’s more than a decade later, he’s in his 30’s now, and he’s still getting haunted by things that happened when he was 17 and 18. Why? That stuff happened over a decade ago. Leave the guy alone. </p>
<p>And the guy always says that instead of going to Berkeley, he would have been better off not gotten into Berkeley at all, but instead gone to UCDavis. Or San Jose State. Or Cal-Stat Hayward (now Cal-State East Bay). If he had gone down that path, I’m fairly certain he would have graduated. Maybe not with top grades (as I imagine he still would have been immature when he was 17 no matter where he went), but hey, at least he would have graduated. It’s far far better to graduate from San Jose State than to flunk out of Berkeley. </p>
<p>Some ideas I have to ameliorate some of these effects are as follows:</p>
<p>*The ‘clean slate’ option. I think that every flunked-out Berkeley student should have the option of completely expunging their entire Berkeley academic record after a reasonable length of time, say 3-5 years. For example, if a guy comes into Berkeley at age 18 and flunks out, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let that guy come back and be given a completely blank transcript and try again when he’s 21 or 23. He’s had his graduation delayed, isn’t that punishment enough? The way it stands now, somebody who gets bad grades and flunks out will always have to deal with those bad grades no matter what. </p>
<p>*The invalidation of bad weeder grades.
Weeder courses exist in numerous majors at Berkeley (and other schools) basically in order to prevent unworthy people from completing those majors. They act as a quality-control check. I disagree with the need for weeders, for I think that a school would be better off simply not admitting people into a particular major who aren’t going to be able to pass the weeders anyway, but I do understand their premise. </p>
<p>However, having said that, what I would ask is if a person gets weeded out of a certain major, why not let him switch to another major with a clean slate? For example, if you start out in EECS and get grades in the EECS weeders that are so bad that you can’t or don’t want to continue in EECS, and so you switch majors to something else, why should those bad EECS grades continue to matter? You already got weeded out of EECS. What more is there to prove? If you end up majoring in Film Studies, who cares what your old EECS weeder grades were? Look, you made a mistake in that you tried out a major that was not for you, and so you ended up wasting a lot of your time and pain in those weeder courses. Shouldn’t that be enough? Why does your permanent academic record have to be forever marred just because you tried out a major that wasn’t for you? What purpose does that serve? </p>
<p>*Finally, I would say why give out grades below a certain threshold, say, a C-?</p>
<p>I would say that if a student gets a really low grade, just don’t even give that student any grade at all or any academic units at all. It would be as if the student never even took the class. Again, I think that if a student does poorly in a class, then just not granting him the units (and thus delaying his graduation) is punishment enough. I don’t think any student out there wants to take a class and wind up with no units. So that should be the threat of bad performance. I don’t think there’s any need to damage a guy’s permanent record. </p>
<p>I would extend this to all of the premed courses. The profs know that many of the students in there are premeds. Hence, I think that the students should all get final grades, but it’s up to them whether they want to have that final grade recorded on their transcript. If the grade isn’t good enough, then I think the student should just be given the option of taking no grade at all (and thus earning no units), and having to take the class again. What’s so bad about that?</p>