The College of Charleston is doing something interesting with their cheating students – giving them an X-tra special grade!
Students caught cheating at the College of Charleston will now be graded for their efforts – they will received a mark of “XF” – which means they failed the course because of academic dishonesty.
I’m curious about the “X”. What does it stand for – “eXtra fail”? “eXtreme failure”?
All kidding aside, this is an interesting idea that should be picked up at more schools. (It’s already implemented at some colleges and universities. For some schools, this kind of grade has been around quite a long time.) Potential employers, when getting a transcript from a school, should be able to see whether their new hires acquired their grades honestly. Plus, I think it’d act as a pretty strong deterrent to a potential cheater to know that his cheating will show up on the transcript he will have to provide to a future employer.
I do think that there’s one weak point to CofC’s method:
The XF grade will remain on a student’s transcript at least two years. After two years, if there are no additional violations, the student can petition to have the grade removed.
I think that time period of two years is too short, since it removes the “stick” of having the cheating being exposed to potential employers for too many would-be cheaters.