Sisolak wants to toughen grade transfer policy

Friday, June 24, 2005 | 8:46 a.m.

Regent Steve Sisolak is on a mission to close what he sees as a major loophole in the Nevada System of Higher Education's transfer policies.

Sisolak said he's been hearing stories about students at UNLV who take some of their harder general education classes at the Community College of Southern Nevada in order to avoid having the lower grade count against them at UNLV. Under current system policy, grades do not transfer with credits from institution to institution.

That allows Millennium Scholarship students to avoid losing their scholarships as a result of not satisfying the GPA requirements, Sisolak said.

"So what we are doing is an artificial grade inflation," Sisolak said, discussing the issue with fellow regents and other system officials during a Board of Regents Academic, Research and Student Affairs committee meeting Thursday at UNR.

And because community college grades don't transfer to the universities, those who do well at the community college lose out on the hard work they put in, Sisolak said.

"You are helping the student who performed underpar and hurting the student who performed overpar," Sisolak said, adding he saw no reason why community college grades for identical university courses shouldn't transfer.

Chris Chairsell, interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, however, said an individual institution is responsible for the grades it gives, and cannot be asked to validate another institutions grading policy.

Transferring GPAs also would keep an institution from knowing how a student is doing in its classes, Tyler Trevor, assistant vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said.

If a student transfers with 75 credits from the community college and has a high GPA, it will take a lot of failing grades to bring that GPA down far enough fo the university to notice there is a problem, Trevor said.

Other advantages to students for not transferring grades is to give them a fresh start, system officials said. The university is still able to see what grades a student received on their transcripts, it just doesn't count toward their institutional GPA.

Those community college grades will come into effect in class ranking at graduation, however, system officials said.

Several staff members also questioned whether taking one or two classes at the community college would really alter someone's GPA that much.

Sisolak said it could if a student is on the cusp of losing his Millennium Scholarship, and that if regents don't do something about the loophole, he knows lawmakers who will.

Student government representatives attending the meeting, however, said students aren't really thinking about grades when they choose courses.

"I don't think that's even a thought in their mind," Peter Goatz, student body president of UNLV, said. "I think a lot of the time it's because UNLV doesn't offer a course they need in their schedule. CCSN is much more accommodating to nontraditional students."

Jeff Champagne, student body president at UNR, says he hears of students taking the humanities sequence at Truckee Meadows Community College because the Truckee course is easier. Students take it because there is less reading.

Regent Jill Derby said there seems to be more advantages to not transferring the grades than the disadvantage Sisolak pointed out of the loophole, but the question remains of how many students are using that loophole.

Regents asked for more data to be brought back to them at the next meeting in September, including how many students at the universities take general education classes like Math 120 at the community college.