Gambling for Grades

Gambling for Grades

This week, I listened to a National Public Radio broadcast that explores issues surrounding, Ultrinsic, an online website that allows students to wager on their grades and earn.  A student’s profit is based on a formula that considers their past performance and expected performance, and students are only rewarded when they exceed expectations.

The founders of the company claim that by law this is not gambling because grades are not based on chance (the legal definition of gambling involves a game of chance) they are earned with skill.

The founders of Ultrinsic claim that they are not currently focused on profiting from the website but only want to spread the idea of “incentivized” grades.  They claim to be providing a service to students by giving them a monetary incentive to improve their grades.  This “service” was available to students at thirty-six colleges at the time of broadcast; UCF is not one of the schools on the Ultrinisic website . 

My initial reaction to this was disgust, and my feelings remained the same, even after I listened to the rest of the broadcast. 

I truly feel that this company is taking advantage of an emotionally and monetarily unstable population.  I can understand why they wanted to go on NPR and encourage a positive image to their “incentivized” grade program because they want to spread the myth that they are helping students perform better.

If a student needs the possibility of losing money to motivate them to study, then it does not seem that they have the proper motivation needed to succeed in college.  Jeremy Gelbart, one of the founders of Ultrinisic said: “We know this is an ulterior motive, but we think that when students are - when they would have a choice between going ahead and partying versus going to study for the books, they're going to choose study for the books because they're going to get the extra dollar” (14:30).

Also, this “incentive program” offers the biggest monetary payouts to students who have lower grades and improve; so, their customers may be in danger of losing scholarships, and if they fail to improve they will lose money to Ultrinisic.

I cringed when Gelbart, justified taking money from college students, who are most likely in debt, by saying that this was their fee for providing grade motivation services.

Am I closed-minded to reject this idea completely?  I am curious how everyone else feels about this.  

Here is a link to their website:  http://www.ultrinsic.com/about.html

“New Website Lets Students Bet on Grades.” Narr. Neal Conan. Talk of the Nation. Natl. Public Radio.

                2010. NPR Internet Archive. Web. 17 Feb. 2011.