Sunday, April 18, 2010

You Might Not Graduate

As the academic year winds down, everybody is busy with papers and finals and understandably are not focused on what happens next year. And while it may seem far away the Fall 2010 Semester is closer than you think (and Summer 2010 is even closer) and everybody needs to know if they are working towards their graduation requirements, and checking that is harder than you might think.


In the Columbian College, if you had a balance sheet printed as a sophomore you cannot EVER get another one printed, they just scribble on the old one and it becomes hard to understand. You need a C- in all 100 level class required for you major (in some cases, not all, and there are departmental requirements which might supersede this one). The GW Bulliten outlines the requirements for each department, but sometimes requirements change and you do not know what you need since only the requirements for the newer students are listed and YOUR contract is for the requirements when you declared you major (in some cases students are urged to use the new requirements if it is possible).


What does this mean for you, the student? There is no uniform list of requirements, there is no easy way to access what you have done and what you need to do when things keep changing and you cannot access a copy of the older requirements.


There are people trying to change this. Students are rallying in a facebook group and online at Know What It Takes To Graduate to get the back editions of the bulletin printed so that every student at the University knows their requirements, this website and facebook group have a simple, and inexpensive solution to the problem

  • GW Administrators will publish the next edition of the GW Bulletin with annotations of all changes made within the last 7 years
  • post all Bulletin’s from the last 7 years online in PDF format.

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