The Washington Post said:
Community colleges in the Washington region are doing brisk business this summer with students from four-year universities. The students are taking advantage of increasingly flexible transfer policies to load up on cheap, convenient credits that will help them graduate more quickly and at a lower expense.
This has always been true at my local CC. But it was students coming back to take “easier” versions of their required classes at the four-year colleges. The phenomenon has always made my Brit Lit I miniterm courses the highest averaged of my classes.
I think it is a good idea, but it can have it’s drawbacks.
My eldest son will graduate with a degree from University of Texas at Austin in 2012. He earned 74 credits (all his general ed requirements+) at a community college while he was still a high school student. He has a 3.85 on those credits. But on his UT majors courses, his average is a B-. And that hurts, because UT moved to a different scale and his GPA at UT only is 2.67. Ouch. Big difference there.
What does it mean? Does it mean the CC classes were too easy? I don’t think that is necessarily so. I know his English classes were difficult. But what it does mean is that he didn’t take any of the easier classes at UT so he won’t be able to have those in his UT GPA. It’s an issue.
I’m going to recommend he put his GPA in as either a weighted mix of the two groups or as a B, instead of as a 2.67. (Which, by the way, I think is atrocious. And an A+ gets the same weight as an A. Why should anyone work for excellence when it will not be rewarded?)