Extra Credit For No One (Unless They Earn It)!

The item about extra credit/bonus points in this week's higher ed fishwrap brought back memories. At the midway point in my so-called career at the Collegium Excellens, I adopted an anthology containing essays written by — for the most part — first-rate historians. The carrot I dangled before the students was intended to encourage them to do what college students should do: prepare for class by doing the assigned reading prior to the due-date. Duh! The method in my madness: jicky, little pop quizzes consisting of a few T/F questions that could be answered with a cursory reading of the assignment. The aggregate effect of the pop quizzes could raise a student's course grade by a letter: B to A, C to B, and so on. Ironically, the students who most needed bonus points or extra credit, did most poorly on the pop quizzes. Later, I threw in some real trick questions. The anthology contained an appendix of brief bio statements about the contributors. Thus, I would provide a T/F statement like "Professor So-and-So teaches (or taught) U.S. history at the University of So-and-So." Again, the method in the madness was to drive the students to exercise critical thinking in their college reading. "Who is this author and why should I believe what the author has written?" Duh! I think without exception it never occurred to the Collegium's students to think critically about their reading. I don't know what my so-called colleagues were doing, but it sure as hell wasn't what I was doing. If this is (fair & balanced) extra credit, so be it.

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No Extra Credit for You: If it's exam week, it must be time for students to make those last-minute pleas for leniency
By Jack Slay Jr.

Not so long ago, late on a Friday afternoon, I administered my last final exam of the semester and returned to my office, paper-laden and world-weary. Opening my office door and dropping a 10-pound stack of exams on my desk, I discovered -- as I knew I would -- my voice-mail light ablink.

The sad rite of passage for every borderline student had begun.

The message was from a student who had finished his exam for me not half an hour ago. It was just one of the dozen or so similar pleas I usually receive during every exam week -- as plaintive a wail as that ever sung by Muddy Waters or B.B. King:

"Dr. Slay, I'm pretty sure I just blew your exam. I really studied but everything got muddled in my head and I got all the stories and poems mixed up and I really need to pass this class because if I don't, I'll lose my scholarship and if I lose that, I can't come back to college."

I flipped through my grade book and discovered that the student had been precariously balanced between passing and failing for most of the semester. A good performance on the final would have secured at least a D (the coward's F, as a colleague calls that particular bottom-feeding grade), perhaps even a C.

Then came that familiar interrogative refrain: "So I wondered if there was something I could do for extra credit? I could write an extra essay or take another exam?"

Finally the kicker: "I could even clean your office for you. I mean I really need to pass this class, Dr. Slay."

As I always do, barbarian that I am, I deleted the message and settled down for a weekend of grading. The answer that I gave that pleading student -- and the one I give countless others -- is one that sets them to moaning and groaning, to cursing my name and my family.

Hardhearted and conscience clear, I simply refuse to give extra credit, especially of the last-minute variety. My classroom policy is that the student will pass or fail the course based solely on the stated requirements. You get what you earn, I tell each class on the first day of each semester. Period.

I've seen too many students squeak by on extra credit, students who have not learned the material or who have learned so little of the material that it is virtually useless. I can't help wondering, every time I read about a bridge collapsing or a building falling, whether the chief engineer was once a student who passed a structural course with extra credit.

I teach composition and literature, and, yes, I realize that few tragic accidents result from fragmented sentences and dangling modifiers.

Still it is principle I cling to, perhaps with a bit of spite: I still occasionally flash back to my high-school chemistry class. I earned a B+ for the year, a grade for which I had sweated and was, consequently, grateful. The student who sat next to me had also earned a B+. But the teacher allowed her to come in after class for a week and wash all the test tubes for extra credit, an opportunity afforded to no other student. She ended the year with an A.

That unearned A still lodges in my craw, as intractable and unsightly as Hester Prynne's. Believe me: I understand the importance of grades, the seeming necessity of A's and B's. In today's educational climate, grades equal jobs. Good grades equal good jobs. And good jobs equal money.

What makes my stubbornness seem even worse is Georgia's Hope Scholarship, a lottery-fueled educational incentive that allows any state resident to attend a state institution tuition-free. Even students who choose to attend a private college in the state are given a generous $3,000 a year through the Hope Scholarship.

The catch? Said students must graduate from high school with a B average or better. The second catch? Said student must maintain that B average in college or lose the scholarship. Many of them, unfortunately, lose it during their freshman year.

So, Atlas-like, I shoulder the burden of causing student after student to lose Hope. Clearly, my no-extra-credit policy is a barrier to their success, the axle-snapping pothole in their road to happiness -- a fact that they enjoy mentioning in essays and on voice-mail messages and in notes folded and wedged under my windshield wiper.

I am, I often think, one of the few professors immune to the call of extra credit. The hallways of the ivory tower are littered with the flotsam of grade-desperate students: toothpick Globe Theaters, Styrofoam Parthenons, Play-Doh busts of Einstein, even candied cells (Tic Tacs for the ribosome, jellybeans for the mitochondria, licorice whips for the endoplasmic reticulum, etc.).

And I have to admit that I have, upon rare occasion, lowered my guard and succumbed to the seductive song of the extra-credit siren. Only a couple years ago I taught Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain to a senior-level group of English majors. So fascinated was I by the strange and archaic vocabulary (Frazier uses words like "blithen" and "flews") that I offered the students a chance to explore similarly unfamiliar words on their own.

All I asked was that they provide the context of the chosen word, its definition, the part of speech, its language of origin, and the date of its earliest known use (all of which could be found in a single trip to the Oxford English Dictionary). The cherry on top of that educational sundae? I promised an extra five points added to their test average.

Amazingly -- to me anyway -- only two students took advantage (the walk to the library was apparently too arduous for the rest of the class) and the two words I got reports on were "shod" and "irrefutable."

My lesson learned, I have since returned to my no-extra-credit policy, insisting that students get what they earn.

Realizing that there's no chance of extra credit in my classroom, some students will attempt another angle: pleading for a more ephemeral sort of credit. Those students believe in the idea that a professor should give extra credit for effort -- for trying; for, in effect, surviving my class. This sort of student feels that even though she has received a C on everything she's done in the course, she should be given a little grade boost because she has never been absent, she has read all the material on the syllabus, and she has completed all the assignments on time. She has truly worked hard and sincerely.

Thus the student deserves a B for working so diligently to earn a C. "Give me," she will plead, "credit for my effort."

Grade ogre that I am, I refuse. I ask those credit-hungry students if they plan to give extra credit to the mason who tried to keep their brick house from falling in (but failed), to the pilot who really tried to land that plane (though failed), to the surgeon who truly attempted to patch the hole in their aorta (but failed).

And, yes, I realize that few deaths have resulted from misplaced commas and misspelled words.

The point, I tell my students semester after semester, is that I am compelled to give the grade earned rather than the grade that the student tried to earn.

My policies cause much anguish and despair among some students, much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. But I believe it is my job to toe the grade line, to record on that final grade sheet exactly what each student has earned in each class.

Occasionally, after exams are marked and filed away, after grades are averaged and handed over to the registrar, a student will stop by my office to say thanks. And in those rare and glistening moments, I know that I have done the right thing.

Jack Slay Jr. is dean of students and a professor of English at LaGrange College, in Georgia.

Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education