Why do W (i.e., Withdrawn) grades exist?

Question

At American colleges and universities, it is nearly universally the case, to the best of my knowledge, that students who choose to withdraw from a course after a short window early in the semester receive a grade of W on their transcript for that course. Generally this grade does not affect the GPA directly, but these W's have direct effects in that they may damage on students' academic standing or financial aid, prevent dean's listing, etc. Probably more importantly, they have indirect effects that people reading a student's transcript may assume a W indicates the student would have earned a very low grade had they finished the course.

Having discussed this with some colleagues, I've had trouble generating arguments in favor of this system. There would be obvious benefits to students of allowing withdrawals not to appear on the transcript. I would argue there would be advantage to professors and universities as well, as students would have less intense pressure to succeed in a course on the first try, thus reducing some pressure on professors to dumb courses down. The best argument I can generate in favor of W's is that they encourage students to commit to their courses, and in particular not to play the lottery in the same course over and over in hopes of getting an easy instructor. But such lottery-playing would be plainly visible in a long time-to-degree, so I don't see that the W does much but add insult to injury here.

What is the fundamental justification universities use for this system?

Answer 1

Like most administrative things which don't seem to make sense, it boils down to accounting and financial aid. Students can take federal financial aid and withdraw from individual classes provided they maintain at least half time status. There are a bunch of caveats & rules and making sure everyone's complying and not accidentally (or intentionally) embezzling requires record keeping.

https://studentaid.unc.edu/special-circumstances/withdrawing-dropping-classes-and-underloads/

Dropping a course after University census date will generally result in receiving a withdrawal indicator of “W” on your transcript. If you had already received your financial aid for the term, this generally will not result in a change to your financial aid, so long as you do not withdraw from all classes.

https://sfa.osu.edu/contact-us/consumer-disclosure/drop-and-withdrawal

Most financial aid will not be adjusted for hour drops after the Student Financial Aid census date. All hours for which you are enrolled as of the fourth Saturday of the term or which you schedule thereafter, will be counted as “hours attempted” for determination of whether you are making Satisfactory Academic Progress for financial aid.

There's no other long term way to prove that the initial financial aid disbursement was correct than a transcript imo and any alternative will just be more complicated and probably screw people years down the line.

Answer 2

A transcript is a record of all academic activity, not only completed courses.

Academically, you want to keep track of students who might require additional guidance because they eventually drop too many courses.

Administratively there are many reasons to keep W’s around. One is that the student is (very likely) declared to funding entities (v.g. states) and thus the university will receive per-credit funding for this student even if he/she has withdrawn. Where I work, the last day to withdraw without penalty (i.e. no W) is the day before student enrolment totals are submitted to the government.

In addition, there are a number of logistical issues also tied to good reporting of enrolment. The student still “requires” resources from the University to stay in the course: actual room allocation requires a headcount not only students who finish the course but also student who remain in the class for an extended period. TA allocation also requires a headcount that is not limited to students taking a final exam. The best way to keep track of this is by having an explicit mention that the course was taken but not completed.

I don’t know of any faculty that “dumbs down” a course because of possible W’s in a course. On the other hand, a course with consistently many W’s may indicate the need for reflection on the part of the Chair or the instructor.

Note that W (or any grade for that matter) is not necessarily a fair reflection of anything but punctual student performance. If you are sick to your stomach on the day before a midterm, or if you a have a strong fever two days before, the odds are you will underperform.

It is regrettable that marks are too often taken out of context and used as a proxy for an evaluation of a person rather than their more limited indicator of the performance of this person in a class as evaluated through tests, assignments, exams etc. without knowledge of the circumstances under which such tests were made.

Answer 3

The only (very weak) justification I can see for W grades is that students who can afford to take courses multiple times will have higher GPAs than students who can't.

But aside from this and the enrollment status issue, I'm inclined to agree that the honest justification is essentially punitive, since a lot of faculty would object that it's "not fair" to allow students to drop without consequence if a course is going poorly. I think it just reflects a more generally punitive attitude that US higher education has towards students, especially when it comes to sorting them as "good" or "bad" students. As further evidence of this, note there is no distinction made between a W incurred for medical reasons and one incurred because a student blew off a course.