More Students Study Hard at OU

by Brittany Yingling
Staff Writer

Books are seeing more daylight on campus: More Ohio University students are opening them and fewer students are being dropped for lacking academic achievement.

Of the 19,155 students who enrolled at OU for the 1999-2000 academic year, the university dropped 519 of them because of low grade point averages, said Deborah Benton, associate university registrar. In the 1998-99 academic year, OU dropped 539 students, and in the 1997-1998 year, the university dropped 552.

OU gives students who achieve a 2.0 or lower GPA have a chance for redemption before they are dropped permanently, said Kathy Schumacher, assistant dean of undergraduate student affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences.

If students do not achieve a GPA of at least 2.0 in the following quarter, they are automatically placed on probation, she said. A letter informs the student of his or her standing.

Students on probation who increase their GPAs by one deficiency point will not be dropped from the university, Schumacher said. A deficiency point is calculated by multiplying the point value, on a four-point scale, of each grade the student received in a class by the credit hours for that class and adding the resulting numbers together.

Those who do not meet these standards are dropped. Most come back to the student affairs to apply for reinstatement, Schumacher said.

Some students do not take this opportunity to raise their grades, she said.

"Students don't realize they really have to study," Schumacher said.

Reinstatement is a process in which the student meets with someone in the college to ask to be returned to the university, Schumacher said. She meets with students to find out why they were dropped.

"The hardest thing, oftentimes, is finding what the problem is," said Caryn Asleson, also assistant dean of student affairs for the College of Arts and Sciences. "That's part of the education process - take this experience, learn from this experience."

The university dropped a total of 201 students after Winter Quarter, Benton said.

Schumacher estimated roughly 50 of these students were dropped from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Schumacher said students who struggle often got good grades in high school.

"It's just the ones that were able to get away in high school with not doing a lot of work," she said. "It's an embarrassment to be expelled from the university."