Kelvin Teo
Queen's Tower, Imperial College London
One advice for any student going through university is that he should expose himself as widely as possible in order to enjoy a well-rounded education. Such an exposure would mean the student has to take courses in areas that he is weak in or totally unfamiliar with. That being said, students usually have another major concern – their Grade Point Average (GPA). Some will feel that taking courses or subjects they are weak in will negatively affect their GPA, and hence, they prefer to “play it safe” and not take subjects that would affect their overall GPA.
Allow me an illustration of an example that will better elucidate the situation at one of the local universities. A student did his undergraduate degree at the National University of Singapore (NUS). NUS has certain requirements for the classification of Honours, which in some ways is similar to the Honours Programme in other Commonwealth universities. The student must complete 160 Modular Credits, and his GPA must be at least 4.5 out of 5.0, and he must also score an A- or above for his Honours Year project in order to earn a First Class Honours. A GPA of 4.00 to 4.49 will earn the student a Second Upper Honours, and for Second Lower Honours, the student must earn a GPA of 3.5 to 3.99.
Every student is typically allowed 12 Modular credits of courses that will be classified as Pass or Fail. This means that should the student pass the module, he/she will earn the modular credits, but their GPA will not be affected. Failing will not affect the GPA either, but that means the students will have less number of modular credits they can use for Pass/Fail courses (Number of credits for the module that they failed subtracted from 12).
Prior to the student’s enrolment in NUS, like most students, he did a map of modules that he wished to take, and those which he wanted to classify as Pass/Fail modules, to make up his 160 modular credits so to speak. However, along the course of his study in NUS, there were many interesting modules being offered, and he ended up graduating with an excess of over 180 modular credits, even going as far as reading a graduate-level course in the discipline of social sciences despite being a biomedical sciences student. However, since he used up his 12 modular credits quota for Pass/Fail courses, the rest of the additional courses he took had to be graded; unfortunately, he did not do as well in those additional courses, which affected his GPA.
Hence, for mathematical sake, assuming if the latter took the normal route as any other student reading courses worth a total of 160 modular credits and using their Pass/Fail options worth of 12 credits, he would have ended up with a higher GPA. Suffice to say, his final GPA was slightly below expectations.
However, what we want to promote here is a culture where students can explore any subjects that they wish without penalising them. We want our students to explore their academic options, but at the same time, we also want to address their concerns that this process of exploration may have a negative impact on their GPA, which ultimately deprives them of a good Honours or Bachelors degree. Perhaps, our universities can take a leaf out of Britain’s Imperial College’s books.
At Imperial College, students are allowed to register for what is known as non-credit electives which are usually offered by the Humanities department of the university, without the need to pay extra school fees. Students submit assignments and take examinations, but the final grade will not be counted in the final evaluation reflected in the transcript. This is a good system to encourage academic exploration because students can do so with the peace of mind. They can devote whatever free time they have available to these electives and work at their own leisurely pace, in the comfort that no matter what, the final grade will never impact their overall transcripts. Hence, students do not have to expend much of their studying time and financial resources if they so desire in trying to get through with these additional electives.
Doing research and purchasing textbooks for an elective require both studying time and financial resources. If such electives are counted towards the student’s credit and reflected in the transcripts, the latter would obviously have to do a lot more work and utilise additional financial resources in order to earn the credit. And this will come at the expense of time devoted to other modules, which isn’t favoured by students either.
The current situation within our universities is that students expressing interest in a certain module make informal arrangements with the professors or lecturers of that module and ask to sit in during classes. This is a purely observational venture, no different from ‘gate-crashing’ a lecture. What is really desirable is for our universities to take a pro-active stance in coming up with a system of non-credit-based electives, which are interesting and of use to students that encourages them to explore their academic options and widen their horizons.
For local university graduates who reflect on their time as undergraduates, their transcripts would definitely have looked much better, and they could possibly be well-off in terms of knowledge, which is in effect killing two birds with one stone, if our universities had a similar system adopted by the Imperial College. Indeed, there is much our local universities can learn from their overseas counterparts in terms of producing well-rounded graduates. Ultimately, a broad-based education will equip our graduates with important skills that will put them in good stead when they either enter the working world or graduate school.
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Part of the P-K4 project series, strategic thinking towards a better future in education.
