The retake policy allows students to re-register a course they have taken before and received a grade of C+ or lower. As long as the two courses have the same course number, students can substitute the newly obtained grade for that of the original one. Since there is no regulation in the number of courses students can retake, they employ this policy to replace unsatisfactory grades and bring up their overall GPA (Grade Point Average).
During the regular course revisions taking place every four years, a number of courses are removed and added to the curriculum. A total of 49 and 69 liberal arts courses were permanently closed in 2009 and this year, respectively.
Courses can be removed from the curriculum if they are opened less than three times in four academic years. However, as the whole liberal arts course system has been revised this year, courses that stray away from the newly set goal of liberal art education were also closed even if they were opened more than three times. Thus, unlike before, nine of the 69 courses can be retaken by taking designated courses.
Because such details of course removal were notified only a week before the course registration period, students had trouble deciding when to retake courses.
“I had not retaken the liberal arts course that I received a grade below C+ to take it in my senior year,” said a student who wishes to remain anonymous. “If I had been informed about the course removal, I would have retaken the course earlier.”
Some students also comment that it is unfair to allow only a few closed courses to be retaken through taking designated courses.
Regarding such inconveniences, Center for General Education (CGE) explains removing courses from the curriculum is inevitable sometimes in order to provide more courses that accord with changing academic trends of the society and Ewha’s academic vision.
The CGE also added that notifying students of the courses that were to be removed any earlier was not feasible.
“We have worked on the liberal art course revision of 2013 since 2011, however, could not notify about the course cut any earlier due to the long discussions with instructors and the time delay in organization,” an official of CGE said.
“We plan to designate more substitution courses for the removed ones this semester.”
Moon bo-ra
boramoon@ewhain.net