Students demand automatic pass grade for second semester courses

AMMAN — With university finals drawing near, students are demanding that their second semester’s courses all be automatically passed.

“This has been a tough semester for us. Underprivileged students have been at a disadvantage, with some of them not having access to Internet or computers,” said Heba Ammari, a chemistry major at the University of Jordan, on Twitter.

“Even those of us who have been able to access the material are lost. Some professors have not posted anything since the lockdown!” Ammari added.

Universities have made the second semester’s results pass and fail, with some universities giving their students the option to calculate their courses’ results in their GPA after the results are out.

At the time, some students condoned the decision, while others condemned it, saying they have “worked too hard to adjust to distance learning”, and that the decision “does not consider those who need to increase their GPA this semester to obtain scholarships”, as put by Lama Sameh, a dentistry student at the Jordan University of Science and Technology, on Twitter.

However, after the Ministry of Higher Education announced that the final exams for universities will be online, a new debate that revolves around a condonable pass for all students emerged this week.

“The pass-fail decision was fine when universities announced that the finals would take place on campus, but not when exams were made online,” said Mosab Jaber, a law student.

Jaber noted that “many things can go wrong in an online exam: A student could cheat, the Internet might go down, the server might become overwhelmed and most importantly, some might not have the technology to undergo an online exam.”

The University of Jordan said that any student who faces technical difficulties may sit for the exam in the summer semester, but under increasing pressure, the Ministry of Higher Education said it was currently studying the condonable pass option.

With multiple hashtags such as #Pass_For_All and #Condonable_Pass trending in social media, the popular demand was met with opposition as well.

One student posted a recording of a Zoom video that involved a clash between a professor and a student, with the student cursing at the professor and interrupting the online class with songs.

“A condonable pass for these disrespectful students? What a mockery of the educational system!” commented Mohammad Abdeen, a student, on the video.

Medical and dentistry students also raised concerns about the effect the decision could have on their future line of graduates.

“The current law for passing a medical year is strict enough that if you have more than one fail a semester you repeat the whole year. That ensures that graduates are competent and trained. A condonable pass can have dire consequences on the graduation of inadequate capacities,” said Mehdi Mallah, a medical student, on Twitter.