Post Academic

Did you think Rate My Professors was the only website you had to worry about when it comes to teaching college? Well, a new website is allowing college students to place bets on their own grades:

A website called Ultrinsic is taking wagers on grades from students at 36 colleges nationwide starting this month.

Just as Las Vegas sports books set odds on football games, Ultrinsic will pay you top dollar for A’s, a little less for the more likely outcome of a B average or better, and so on. You can also wager you’ll fail a class by buying what Ultrinsic calls “grade insurance.”

Since students can only bet on themselves and the site isn’t gambling in the sense that you’re betting on what others will do, Ultrinsic paints itself as a motivational tool. Ultrinsic’s home page text proclaims: “The right amount of cash should provide you with the needed motivation to pull all-nighters and stay awake during the lectures of your most boring professors.”

Via: huffingtonpost.com More after the jump! Image of the French gambling aristocracy from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

It’s a shame, really, that they can’t go whole hog. Imagine a world in which students could bet on each other. Why not? With the unemployment rate the way it is, students might have a better shot at making money this way than at getting a job with a decent paycheck. Besides, the less rigorous students already make a bet, of sorts, when they go teacher-shopping to find the classes and teachers who are most likely to provide easy A’s.

Perhaps college teachers could set up their own gambling sites so they could amuse themselves by betting on students. For example, what are the odds that the stoner in the corner who sleeps through everything will pass? Or that the little-miss-perfect in the front row is actually a raging plagiarist?

If the very thought of grade gambling amuses or disturbs you, you can find out whether or not Ultrinsic is available at your school on the site’s FAQ.