After the Fall 2013 semester, the Connecticut College Office of Study Away removed the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, from their list of approved programs as a result of receiving several complaints from returning students regarding their experience abroad. This is a shame, but probably the best decision. Three students that recently returned from UCT had a very specific set of concerns regarding the translation of the grades from the courses they took abroad; things just don’t seem to add up.
“I felt like I was doing relatively well in my classes, but was taken completely by surprise by what I saw on my official transcript,” said Nick Kensey ’14. UCT uses the British grading system, which, unofficially, marks 75 as the highest grade possible, or an A+. It is generally understood that grades in the 70-range are difficult to attain for any student being graded on that system; grades are often much lower, somewhere in the range of the high 50s or lower 60s. Obviously, this is quite a bit different than Conn’s grading system, where over 50% of rewarded grades are in the A-range of 90 or above.
This indicates need for a grade conversion scale that would translate foreign credits into the Conn system. Fortunately, most study abroad programs, be they larger international programs such as SIT or IFSA Butler, or foreign universities, provide guidance for accurate grade translations. Often, they are presented in the form of a scale (for example: if a student earns a 63, that converts to a B in the American system.) Foreign programs can choose to do conversions themselves and send in the final grades in the form of an official transcript or send the grades in their raw form along with a clear system that determines how grades should be translated.
That being said, the grades themselves cannot be changed by Conn administrators. This is stated in the Connecticut College Study Abroad Handbook: “The College will not change the grades or number of credits awarded by another institution and/or a program instructor.” The grades they receive come in the form of a legal document and cannot be touched except to do the standardized conversions. There is no voodoo or dark magic done to the grades received, other than to look at a chart and enter the corresponding American grade. More often, they aren’t changed.
After all is said and done, some students are left more unpleasantly shocked than pleasantly surprised by what they see on their new transcript. Sometimes, regardless of whether or not they worked hard through the semester, their grades just seem lower than expected.
It is a natural first reaction to take it up with the Office of Study Away. The issue seems to be that the whole process for entering grades is not terribly transparent. The Study Away Office seems to be under the impression that all students are given a summary of the grading system by their program or university during orientation. This is not always the case. However, it is up to the university to provide them at a certain point, not Conn. Though we are aware of the fact that our final grades will be factored into our overall GPA, the process behind it seems shady. It doesn’t help that when we email the Office we are, more often than not, told that everything will be fine and to not worry. In the eyes of the Study Away office back here at Camp Conn, that’s true: they have a clearer idea of what the process is than we as students do. I am not suggesting a change in grade conversions on Conn’s part, because it is ultimately up to the foreign university to provide grades, but rather an expansion or focus on the understanding as to how translation is done. But, this does not all have to fall on the shoulders of the Study Away Office employees.
Shirley Parson, the Director of the Study Abroad Office, and the Registrar, Beth Labriola, made an interesting point about student accountability with regard to a chosen program.
“It should really be like looking at colleges all over again. There are so many resources to inform yourself about whether the program is right for you,” said Parson.
An element of the experience of Study Away as a whole is being surprised by where you find yourself. For some, the culture itself is confusing and new (“Culture Shock” is one of the many issues covered in the Study Away manual.) Kensey, as well as fellow juniors, Abigail Stevenson and Will Pisano, say that they felt relatively unprepared for their transition into UCT. “We were really not given any information about the grading system or other aspects of the university program,” said Pisano. It is unclear whether the Study Away Office gave these students any indication that past students had issues studying at UCT. This would have been worth mentioning during the application process.
That said, I agree with Parson that it is really the student’s responsibility to do all the possible research on their selected program to be sure that they go in with at least a rudimentary sketch of what their experience might look like. It is a privilege to have the option to study abroad, so the process of finding a program that fits your needs should be taken seriously. Part of the search should include looking at the size of the university, the location, housing options, and offered courses, among other things. For sophomores in college, the process should really be more independent, moreso than when students applied to college, and that should come with the basic responsibility of knowing the fundamentals of the program.
Pisano, Kensey, and other students that recently returned from study away passed a resolution in SGA that may lead to policy changes in a way that would allow students to take their classes abroad as Pass/Fail rather than for a grade. This idea has some merit: allowing students to take classes Pass/Fail would alleviate some of the academic stress added to the initial anxieties of immersion in another language. This could give students more opportunity to travel and fully commit themselves to exploring the culture.
Colby College does not count credits taken abroad toward the students’ overall GPA as stated in their student handbook: “The policy to grant credit, but not factor grades into the GPA for non-Colby programs stems from the inherent impossibility of controlling the curricula of all the programs that we approve for credit transfer.” It is a fair point that counting credit hours at another institution that cannot be exactly equivalent to Connecticut College seems ridiculous. Studying away is not part of the Conn experience if we are physically leaving campus to experience the outside world. Why should grades from classes we take elsewhere be so fully integrated into our Conn records?
Again, though, how useful can this resolution be if, as the Study Away handbook mentions, even if we were to be given merely a chunk of noncommittal, Pass/Fail credit on our official Conn transcripts, graduate schools and employers are still perfectly within their rights to expect students to provide an additional transcript from their foreign university that shows the actual, numerical grades? Opting out of immediate responsibility for the specific grades catches up if employers are also likely to use the abroad transcripts as part of their hiring process. “It is, after all, an academic experience,” concluded Parson.
Overall, I think these issues reflect deficiencies on everyone’s part. The Office of Study Away should include more information as to how they go about changing (or really, not changing) grades from foreign grading scales, and students should take responsibility when it comes to looking at what system their chosen program uses. At this point, many NESCAC schools no longer calculate abroad credits into overall GPA. Conn now stands at the precipice of either making the choice to join the majority of the conference, or to maintain the current system. After reading the Study Away handbooks of nearly all of the NESCAC schools, I found that all of the programs are inherently the same. They all expect their students to take charge in deciding to study away and molding their own experience while still being mindful of academic challenges in the midst of new, cultural ones.
