Academic Amnesty
Intent
This policy is intended to enable transfer, re-entry, or transfer re-entry students to petition to exclude grades earned five or more years ago in the calculation of their official UW Oshkosh cumulative GPA. The purpose of this policy is to establish an effective way to encourage capable mature students to return when they have achieved poorly during an earlier attempt at higher education. The spirit of the policy is to make a fresh start possible for these students. Continuing UW Oshkosh students are not eligible to apply for academic amnesty of earlier grades.
National Best Practices
The proposed policy is in line with best practices in serving adults in higher educa-tion as identified by the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Council on Adult and Experiential Education (CAEL). The key recommendation by both organizations is to take into account the student’s cur-rent abilities, motivation and potential for success.
The ACE Guidelines State
“The familiar factors such as grade-point average, aptitude test scores, and teach-ers’ recommendations are hard to abandon, even though they are no longer valid indicators for adults . . . A low-threshold admission policy that enables adults to take a few courses to test themselves, followed (if and when they are ready) by application for admission to degree candidacy, meets the needs of both adult learners who worry about their capabilities and faculty who worry about standards.”
The CAEL Principle of best practice as identified in its 1999 national benchmarking study is
“The institution uses an inclusive, non-competitive admission process to determine the best educational match for the adult learner.”
Definition
Under this proposal prior grades may be excluded from the computation of a student’s official cumulative grade point average.
Proposal
Transfer, re-entry, or transfer re-entry students seeking admission or readmission to UW Oshkosh who have not earned a baccalaureate degree may be eligible for exclusion of grades, not credits or courses, earned five or more years prior. This policy does not apply to graduate programs.
1. A. If a student is not eligible for admission to the University with her/his incoming GPA, the student may make a formal written application to an Admissions Standards Consideration Team (ASCT) to in-voke Academic Amnesty. The ASCT consists of a faculty member, an admissions officer, academic ad-visor, and a Dean. It is important that members of the ASCT be available to meet during the summer. In order to consider applications for Academic Amnesty in a timely manner, two or each category of mem-bers of the ASCT (two faculty, two admissions officers, two academic advisors, and two Deans) will be identified, any of whom can participate in consideration of applications for Academic Amnesty.
b. The student is asked to provide reasons for previous performance and information about current edu-cational plans. The ASCT will assess the student’s record and application and consult with the student to determine the best course of action.
2. Students who are admissible to the University are eligible to apply for application of this policy no later than the end of their first semester at UW Oshkosh.
3. A student can apply for and receive Academic Amnesty only once.
4. If Academic Amnesty is granted, all courses taken during an identified academic term(s) five years be-fore admission/readmission will continue to appear on the student’s record. If multiple terms are in-cluded in the granting of Academic Amnesty, the terms must be continuous. The computation of the student’s official cumulative GPA will not include the excluded grades. Credit hours earned with a 1.0 (D) or better may be used to satisfy degree requirements, even though they are not included in the student’s GPA. Academic Amnesty does not adjust the GPA and number of credits attempted and counted toward Satisfactory Academic Progress for financial aid.
5. Academic Amnesty applies to admission to the University, not to particular programs. The colleges re-tain ultimate authority to determine admission to the college. Likewise, colleges retain the right to limit the number of repeated courses. If, after the successful granting of an Academic Amnesty application, a student achieves eligibility for admission to a program, a college cannot reject that student’s eligibility for admission.
6. All other University policies (for example, Honors and Deans’ Lists) remain in effect and are not changed by the Academic Amnesty policy.
*At the time of implementation of this proposal, currently enrolled students who wish to apply for the exclu-sion of grades earned five or more years earlier will have up to 2 semesters after the effective date of the im-plementation of the Academic Amnesty Proposal to be considered. This is a one-time-only opportunity for students enrolled at the time of implementation of this proposal.