UTMSU continues its push for the revision of Credit/No Credit
The Medium interviewed UTMSU’s VP of University Affairs to gain insight into the Union’s progress on the campaign.
The Credit/No Credit (CR/NCR) option is one of the most powerful course management tools available to students at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).
According to the current policy, a student can apply CR/NCR through ACORN to prevent their final numerical grade for a course from appearing on their transcript. Instead, they will receive a notation of “CR” or “NCR,” depending on whether their final grade is at least 50 per cent.
As such, it is very useful for students who wish to fulfill distribution requirements or explore courses without putting their grade point average on the line.
However, using CR/NCR comes with some limitations—a student cannot use CR/NCR to fulfill program requirements; a student can only use the option for a maximum of two credits; and a student can only apply or remove CR/NCR before the term’s final exam period.
So when Sidra Ahsan ran for Vice President of University Affairs of the UTM Students’ Union (UTMSU) last year, one of the main focuses of her campaign was to advocate for the extension of the deadline to invoke the CR/NCR policy.
Nearly a year into her term, Ahsan shed some light on the Union’s progress with the Extend CR/NCR initiative in an online interview with The Medium.
What’s the rationale?
Ahsan says the UTMSU is currently trying to convince the University of Toronto (U of T) administration to move the CR/NCR deadline to the last day students receive their final grades. She holds that at its core, the Extend CR/NCR initiative is about students’ well-being and defending their academic interests.
“We want to advocate for students to be able to make an informed choice when they use the CR/NCR policy,” she explained. “A lot of people report their mental health being affected by making these decisions beforehand and not using CR/NCR as a result.”
Ahsan emphasized the unfairness of prohibiting students from deciding whether to use CR/NCR around the time they write their finals. “Students should get to see their final grades before they decide [to use CR/NCR]. Sometimes exams are 50 per cent [of your final grade] and you can’t really estimate how well you’re going to do.”
She asserted that “the general consensus is that students do want this policy and that it would benefit them.” According to a UTMSU lobby document released in 2023, 98 per cent of UTM students are in favour of the Union’s proposal to extend the CR/NCR deadline.
Getting by, looking ahead
Reflecting on the progress the UTMSU has made on the initiative since last spring, Ahsan highlighted a UTORid-protected survey concerning Extend CR/NCR which was created in collaboration with the student unions at the U of T St. George and Scarborough campuses.
She stressed that in previous years, although all the students’ unions were advocating to extend CR/NCR, their efforts were largely disjointed. Much of her work has been to facilitate communication and unity across the campuses to work towards the initiative. Ahsan and the students’ unions have evidently been successful in that regard.
“Creating that survey and getting out all of that data on paper and analyzing it, I’d say that’s the biggest accomplishment thus far.” The UTMSU is now preparing to present the data from that survey to the university administration.
Looking ahead, she anticipates that logistics will continue to be the biggest obstacle to making Extend CR/NCR a success. She explained, “It’s not just a policy where someone can just sign off on something and then it can be applied. There’s a lot of different stakeholders involved.”
Ahsan said the UTMSU will focus on working in concert with the other students’ unions and organizing a meeting with as many relevant administrators as possible to “lobby every single person we can at the same time.”
As it stands, the CR/NCR policy functions the same across all three U of T campuses.
For comparison, York University’s Pass/Fail option functions similarly to U of T’s CR/NCR. However, York’s policy requires that students complete 24 credits before using it (a course typically garners three or six credits).
The University of Guelph’s Credit/No Credit grading option and McMaster University’s Personal Interest Course option are similar to U of T’s policy, although the rules for using them are stricter.
Finally, Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Ottawa, and Wilfred Laurier University do not seem to have any permanent CR/NCR policies. However, each of these schools applied a temporary CR policy during the Covid-19 pandemic.
