Students returning from abroad may no longer have to worry about translating restaurant menus, but they should worry about another kind of translation: their grades. In light of the Educational Policy Committee’s (EPC) vote in favor of a policy that excludes study abroad grades when calculating a student’s grade point average, we encourage the University faculty to reevaluate treatment of grades received abroad.
Currently, Director of the Office of International Studies Carolyn Sorkin is the sole person in charge of interpreting grades earned abroad. It doesn’t matter exactly how many students have formally appealed Sorkin’s interpretations—what matters is the lack of transparency in the current system. With over 140 study-abroad programs formally approved by the University, it’s hard to tell what kind of grade scheme can distinguish a B from a B- in Argentina versus South Africa. There’s no denying the variety of grading paradigms around the world: at some point this practice is inevitably going to be imprecise and inaccurate, no matter who’s translating.
The University’s policy also sets us apart from our peer institutions: in a comparative study made available to the Wesleyan Student Assembly representatives who sit on the EPC, out of 23 peer institutions, only Middlebury and Connecticut College calculate abroad grades into students’ GPA. While it’s a bad idea for the University to change policies just to jump on the peer-institution-bandwagon, we are also troubled that as recently as last February, the Committee on International Studies decided that students studying in certain University programs in the United Kingdom will receive three instead of four credits, because these programs run about a month shorter than a semester at Wesleyan. Clearly, this demonstrates the University recognizes that different pedagogies are at play in foreign institutions. Students may be forced to pay Wesleyan tuition when they go abroad, but that doesn’t mean their academic experience should be treated as a virtual Wesleyan. So, why have our study-abroad grades treated like Wesleyan grades?
There’s still a way to encourage students to study abroad while discouraging them from slacking off. The University can adequately account for students’ academic work by either placing grades in a non-translated format on a student’s transcript (along with an appropriate explanation of the grading system), or by placing translated grades without factoring them in the Wesleyan GPA. When it comes to the difference between As and Bs, this is one thing the University shouldn’t let get lost in translation.
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