If the University began to implement some sort of currency in order for students to skip the line or wait, I believe the most popular option would be registering for classes. More specifically, registering for classes with a preferred time slot (after 10am and before 3pm) or registering for classes with a popular/sought-after professor. The price would be set according to previous popularity of the class as well as demand.
Say the price is set high for a popular class/required and not as high for other non-required classes, then students would have to prioritize which class to spend most of their illinibucks on. This would add value to the required classes since they are so sought-after and cause grades in that class to increase. This would happen because those students would not want to repeat the course since the price to get the class initially was so high. Also, they would have less classes to take that semester due to the currency allocation if they register for a popular/required class. On the other side, free electives/general courses would not see much change since their demand is not as high. One possible outcome would be that courses with low popularity might see a slight decrease in grades for the same reason as stated before and lack of value of the class. Another effect that would happen is that we would see that decrease in overloading classes to find the best suited ones as talked about earlier in the semester. This would be due to limited currency available. Students that would be in actual need of a class would find those classes more accessible than before due to this new policy.
If a price for a popular class is set too low then we would see similar things happening that are currently happening. Students would overload their classes and there would be a shortage of that class for students that are in actual need of it. There would be excess classes taken by some students and it would be hard for them to prioritize their time with many classes leading to an overall decrease in grades and GPA.
Another possible outcome that would rise if the price is set too low for a popular class is the emergence of a black market. Students would exploit the system and register for classes they know are popular and don't actually need in exchange for a high bidder of illinibucks. The price being set too low would make a few lucky fast people take advantage of the situation which would lead to a big increase in opportunism. Laws like price gouging would have to go into effect and a whole new set of policies would have to come into effect in order to prevent this from happening. To prevent this, the school would have to act as the market in order to correct the price. Simple economics would allow for this to happen. Paying attention to supply and demand would cause the most accurate prediction of the price needed for any class and would eliminate the black market almost completely.
Overall the system that is currently in play is one that is mostly adopted throughout the entire U.S education system and has worked fine although it is not perfect. So if it is not broken, don't fix it.
Not sure why you chose to center adjust the text in your post, but I encourage you to fix this one and left adjust the text. It is easier to read that way. Center adjustment has limited value - for titles or for inserting a picture.
ReplyDeleteI want to make sure I understand your comment about grades increasing. Students who got into a course which was hard to get into would work harder (put in more effort). Is that it? I didn't understand why that doesn't happen now. Is that the students who do get in now don't appreciate their good fortune?
I want to take on what you said in the last paragraph - on the question whether the system is broken or not. The question is whether there are some students in a class that they don't need while other students can't get into the class but do need it. If that is happening, then things can be improved upon. The existence of Pareto Improvement doesn't mean the system is broken, only that things can be made better. Why wouldn't you want to do that, if it were possible to accomplish?
You talk about an interesting idea of "pricing" different classes. I did not think about this for my post and this it's an interesting concept. I wonder how the class prices would be determined. Would they be by facility, previous students, or a third party?
ReplyDeleteI was interested in how the Illinibucks have an effect on GPA. You said that if prices are too low, students would overload their classes and their grades would decrease. I think a point not brought up is how the Sunk Cost fallacy would discourage students from dropping classes that they paid Illinibucks for, since they don't want to feel like they wasted their currency. I think that this decrease in grades would also happen if prices were too high. I find that a lot of students will overload and then drop classes that they find to be impossibly difficult. If the price of registering for classes is high, students would not have the ability to overload, and would basically be stuck with whatever they have. If they get into a super hard course, they can't really back out because they probably only signed up for barely as many credit hours as they require for their degree, and thus their grades suffer. Either way, Illinibucks seem to have a negative effect on grades.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting approach to the idea of Illinibucks. I like how you considered what effect the bucks would have on GPA since you saw that people would most likely increase their grades since they are investing the bucks into the class. Its interesting especially because we technically invest "bucks", aka tuition, into all of our classes. Do you think that students think about their tuition when they decide to take a class? Or how about if when they only take 12 hours for a semester if they are getting their money's worth?
ReplyDelete