Photo Shutterstock If it is up to WUR exam commissions, they won’t. The commissions are currently responsible for converting the grades obtained during exchanges. The petition for a change in the system, replacing grades with a pass/fail system.
The grades students obtain during an exchange are currently translated to the WUR system, says Geert Smant (chair of the WUR exam commission faculty policy council). ‘Not a simple task at all since teachers in different countries use different grading systems. Results may be presented as letters in one country and as percentages in another. There are also cultural differences, making it easier to obtain high grades in some countries than in others.’
Hence, the exam commission requires a fair level of knowledge about the countries and institutes WUR students visit during their exchange. ‘A mission impossible’, Samant says. ‘How can one determine whether the result obtained at a Spanish institute translates into a 7, 7.5 or 8 here? There are always assumptions in play, which causes discomfort among the members of the commission.’ Some six hundred such conversions are requested each year.
Pass/fail
Whether grade conversions can be replaced by the pass/fail system, as the exam commission suggests, is currently being investigated. That would mean that exchange students will no longer see grades obtained during their exchange in the Osiris system but rather a simple “pass” or “fail”. Exchange students will receive a transcript with the actual grades as they were awarded during the exchange ‘to ensure the non-converted grades are always available to them’, Samant says.
If the conversion policy is definitively altered, a transition period will likely be introduced, allowing students on exchange until 1 August 2025 to still submit a request for conversion of their grades. More information will be divulged as it becomes available.
