Huffington Post: Think you're going to ace freshman year? Want to put money on that? A website called Ultrinsic is taking wagers on grades from students at 36 colleges nationwide starting this month. Just as Las Vegas sports books set odds on football games, Ultrinsic will pay you top dollar for A's, a little less for the more likely outcome of a B average or better, and so on. You can also wager you'll fail a class by buying what Ultrinsic calls "grade insurance."
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Ultrinsic Sponsors Gambling On Grades At 36 Colleges
Huffington Post: Think you're going to ace freshman year? Want to put money on that? A website called Ultrinsic is taking wagers on grades from students at 36 colleges nationwide starting this month. Just as Las Vegas sports books set odds on football games, Ultrinsic will pay you top dollar for A's, a little less for the more likely outcome of a B average or better, and so on. You can also wager you'll fail a class by buying what Ultrinsic calls "grade insurance."
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22 comments:
This is really weird. It sounds all well and good, like a great way to motivate students to get good grades. It provides a more immediate monetary gain than the more abstract and sometimes unforeseeable job that awaits the average student. However, one thing that did not sit well with me was "grade insurance". If you fail a class, you can get back some money. I don't understand what kind of motivating factor that would be. Overall, very interesting but also unsettling.
While a competitive environment can be great motivation for students to succeed, this does not seem to be a great way to create that. First of all, the system itself is flawed from a monetary standpoint. Gambling can also be dangerous and addicting. Grades are important, but ultimately learning material and improving are much more important, and you can't bet on that. Those values can slip into the background when the main focus shifts to money for just grades. Incentive is always useful, but this seems a little extreme.
It's silly that students are now getting paid to get good grades. I know it is a way for this company to make money, but I believe it may be detrimental to the students. People need to be self motivated to do well. If there are always external rewards provide during the educational years, graduates will be less well off in the real world. There is not always such a readily available reward for working to a certain level in the real world. It may take years to achieve the same sort of rewards. Instant gratification is becoming an increasing problem, and will affect the way people deal with issues in the future as they become the forefront of our society.
I agree with the other comments. The entire things sounds shady and probably doesn't send the right message to students. There is also the matter of pressure. I feel that with each class there is more and more mounting pressure that just eats the students alive. Talking to an upperclass student, he was telling me that the same project that I had just finished, nearly killing myself over, he just kind of slapped out without another thought. And it continues on to the lower classes, especially the ones in high school, which is where I think this grade gambling is going to go to if it becomes even slightly popular. Facebook made the same type of switch over and now any age group can have a Facebook. With the idea that you can profit from having good grades will probably do something fairly horrible to the high school students. Its bad enough they compete to get into good colleges. I am probably blowing this idea out of proportion but it could happen... I just think that it could lead to some unwanted consequences.
"This is really weird" sums up my thoughts on Ultrinsic as well. I see how appealing it might seem to be able to bet on your own academic performance (seeing as you know better than anyone else how well you think you're going to do in a class) but as with any casino, the house (in this case, company) always wins. Sure, you might get lucky and make a few bucks at the end of the year, but so many factors affect your academic performance that you can't be sure. Also, like others commented, this isn't exactly the best form of personal motivation. It might get you through college if you really really need it, but think about it. After college, you can't bet on how well you're going to do at your job. Also, I find it very odd that you can bet on poor performance as well. In extreme cases, couldn't you see someone placing a large bet and then purposefully failing to win it? I don't see this operation lasting too long, but we'll see.
This is just.. strange to me. It reminds me of kids in high school who would get paid for grades by there parents, and that has never really sat well with me. While it might be a nice way for a college student to make some money to pay for a small part of college, and I understand the desire to make money being a motivator for people, I don't like the idea of monetary gain and what is almost gambling (which they debate about throughout the entire article) being inserted into an academic environment which is supposed to be not focused on money, but on the skills and knowledge the student can gain through classes. This just seems a little much, and while it seems to be growing, it is just not something I will ever agree with
I disagree with most of the other comments. I think that this is a great idea. Nothing motivates people more than money. If you knew that $50 bucks was riding on your grade in Tech MGMT(just an example), wouldn't you pay more attention in class and work a little harder on the assignments? How is this any different than a parent giving their kids money for good grades. In fact I would be willing to bet money that is how this whole concept was born. Any takers?
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None of you ever went to a place that would give you gift cards or tokens (good times, Chuck E. Cheese) for your grades? I'm a little set off by the idea of "grade insurance", like Ariel and others here, but I don't see a problem with providing tangible rewards for succeeding in coursework. The only thing that worries me is that you can set a grade expectation for a class - meaning if you self-report that you'll get a B, it may cause you to become complacent near the end of the semester (I have a B and unless I try really hard on the final, I'll keep the B). But that happens anyway - Ultrinsic just allows you to put your money where your mouth is and possibly give you extra motivation toward success.
when I first read this, I was a little bit weirded out, but then after thinking about it for a little while, I agree with Taylor. While I have never really agreed with the practice of parents giving their children money or gifts for good grades (mostly because I was jealous) and I think that being able to self-motivate without tangible rewards is an essential skill to have, I don't think that betting on your grades in college is necessarily an all bad thing. As long as you are aware that the real world is not like this, and you don't become addicted to gambling, I think that grades are a great way to make a little big of extra money. I don't think you should be able to bet that you WON'T get above a certain grade, since that could lead to you purposely downgrading your work if the money is more important than your GPA.
I also find this to be a weird idea, but I haven't decided yet if it is in a negative or positive way. This website clearly motivates students to do well, while potentially breeding some gambling habits that nobody really wanted. I think the most concerning thing about this article is that the legality of the entire organization seems a little bit fuzzy. The company's owner swears it isn't gambling, because your outcome involves your own personal skill, but I could find many online poker players who would tell you the same thing about what they do. I'm having a hard time supporting this relatively new website when it may turn out that all of these college students that are involved are going to receive negative repercussions because what they're doing is not entirely legal.
I wish this program would come to us here. I want to make money based on my academic performance. The people that I consistently see putting more effort into classes are those with a tighter financial situation. The more someone is paying for their education, the more they tend to care. People I know who worked every cent of their way through college got the most of it, because they were sure as hell going to take advantage of the things they were working so hard for. Not all of us are that involved with shouldering the burden of our education. Perhaps this system could help some students find some personal motivation.
This article assumes that grades have something to do with learning. My experience has been that learning and grades are more likely to be mutually exclusive. Prior to my college experience, grades were the minimal requirement for learning. (Of course, CMU has changed that outlook.) I never was one of those kids who got paid for good grades. People who want to learn study. Period. Those who don't, don't. However, thinking that this website is introducing youngsters to gambling and corrupting their morals is laughable. Grades have always been a gamble. A bad teacher is like a 50 pound weight on a Thoroughbred. A pile of homework due on the same day is a bad break, meaning you have to hedge your bets. Ultrinsic is just putting money for the students on what used to be just money for the college coffers. I say "Go for it! And where can I place my bet? It will help pay for my college education."
If it's really legal, and it sounds like it is, then why would you want to stop any student who is old enough to make his or her own decisions from participating? Betting $20 for a payoff of $2000 that you'll get a 4.0 might be a long shot, but $2000 is also a nice incentive to work hard for those grades. As for the "grade insurance", the payoff for a bad grade doesn't seem like much when compared to the tuition cost of a class that was failed and the resultant added cost of retaking it, so I don't see that as being something a rational student would be likely to try to play the system with.
While I like the idea of getting paid for the work one does, the idea of betting on grades just kind of comes off as sorta wrong feeling. There have been a few articles in the past that have been about how schools (I think mostly high-schools) were rewarding students with money or other rewards for good school work. While I am ok with that, the idea of betting on yourself however just seems to open the issue up for misuse. This may sound kind of odd, but as I understand the system, a student who's desperate enough for cash could game the system by intentionally having bad semesters and then using the odds created on them to cash in big by magically turning it around the next semester. I wonder how many parents would be happy to learn that their children were gambling on their educations.
This is not a good idea. Most students already feel enough pressure to get good grades for many this is just too much. Yes the people who are already stressed probably won’t be doing this but some will be. Although this idea might provide motivation and incentive for some it will only cause pain and pressure for others. I think that our society puts enough importance on grades as it is and money does not need to be added into the mix
I think this is a really smart idea. Whether it is morally "right or wrong" is sort of besides the point. This company is going to make a lot of money, and students are going to be much more motivated to improve their grades. And, while as others have said, just because you're getting good grades doesn't necessarily mean that you are learning the material, it certainly improves the odds. People are able to save money on things with their good grades anyway...I have always gotten a break on my car insurance with the good student discount. There doesn't seem to be a huge difference between saving money and giving you money. As for students feeling more pressure, then they don’t have to participate. This is not a mandatory thing schools are initiating, it is an optional gamble that no one is forcing anyone to join in on.
This is so ridiculous and funny at the same time. I would hope that the motivation to do well in college is to prepare yourself for a career,. While I don't agree that you need to get paid for getting good grades in college, I think that Ultrinsic has come up with a websiet that many students will find fun to use. I mean, if you can make money for doing what you are supposed to be doing anyway, why not? The whole concept is ridiculous, but I'd like to see where this goes.
Presuming that this is actually legal, Ultrinsic seems like a great way for a specific set of students to get motivated. I know that, especially in high school, my overall understanding of a topic was frequently not reflected in the grade that I received for the class, because once I understood a concept, I was hardpressed to spend much more time or energy on "excelling" in that class. It frustrated certain teachers of mine to no end, but it ended up working for me. If I had been able to bet on my grades, I think that I may have pushed myself harder to do the work, a win-win situation for me and my teachers.
What an... intriguing concept. I can see the positives and negatives of this system, but there is something unsettling about giving access to your personal academic records in order to see how likely a person is to pass a class based on their personal history. It's great if someone has motivation to do well in school, but I am not really sure if this is the best solution.
What a strange way to make money, betting on your ability to make the grade. While it could be used as a motivator to do well and get good grades, it seems a little odd. The "grade insurance" for predicting and failing a class does not seem to be such a good motivator, but rather an easy way out and to make money all while dropping your gpa.
This, though is apparently not "technically" gambling, is essentially gambling. I'm not sure how to feel about it. I suppose its a pretty good way to motivate yourself towards getting good grades, but then again so is rewarding yourself with an episode of Glee or an icecream or something.
Also, I'm not so sure that I would trust a website like this, and I don't understand how the company can stay going. It just seems pretty shady overall.
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