Should college students be allowed to bet on their grades?

If a student bets $20 on getting a 4.0 grade average, the payout is $2,000 if they succeed.

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last updated 8 January 2015

Smart college kids can now make money with As. A new website allows students at 36 schools nationwide to gamble on their GPA. There's good money to be made, too: If a first-year student bets $20 that she will graduate with a 4.0 average, there's $2,000 to be made. Flailing freshmen can even buy "grade insurance" to hedge against flunking classes. Ultrinisic.com circumvents anti-gambling laws by rewarding skill, rather than chance — but is it really ethical to allow students to bet on their academic prowess?

Creating your own incentives is no bad thing: I like it, says Donald Marron in The Christian Science Monitor. The prospect of a payout provides an ideal "financial incentive to get your future self to study a bit harder." Although the idea of hedging against bad grades sounds like a "moral hazard," Ultrinsic will no doubt "offer such high premiums" that students will avoid buying it.

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It will encourage cheating: The idea that this will make students work harder is a "cop-out," says Alexander McCormick, director of the National Survey for Student Engagement, quoted in USA Today. In fact, it's more likely it will provoke "cheating, grade-grubbing and bribery" from more "academically dishonest" students. The only incentive it will provide is for figuring out how to beat the system.