MILWAUKEE -- A huge weight may have just been lifted off of some UW-Milwaukee students' shoulders.
It just got a little easier to graduate from the College of Letters & Science.
Starting this month, students no longer need a 2.5 minimum grade point average to graduate. That is the equivalent to a C plus average. Now, they are required to have a 2.0 or a C average to receive their degree.
Scott Gronert is the dean of the College of Letters & Science at UWM. It is home to more than 20 different majors, including biological science, math and journalism. Gronert says they wanted to align with every other department in the UW system, which all require a 2.0 or C average to graduate.
The UWM faculty committee agreed a 2.5 minimum GPA put an extra burden on the student, and there was no educational goal behind it.
On December 11, it went to the university level where they voted in favor of this change. Because of this, more UWM students graduated last Sunday.
"About 50 more graduated this fall from the college of letters and science out of the 2,200 that graduated from the university in the December graduation," said Gronert.
We spoke to Chandler Kopp who hopes to graduate with a science degree in two years about the change, "It's not like I'm gunna try for just C's, but it kind of alleviates a little bit of the pressure."
The current graduation rate at UW-Milwaukee is about 42 percent. Gronert does not expect that number to go up by more than a fraction. He adds the vast majority of students at the College of Letters & Science at UWM have a GPA higher than 2.5.
