Ad-Libs | A website you can bet is problematic

There are only two things college students may love more than free food: good grades and money. Former Penn students decided to join the two, and ultrinsic.com was born.

Ultrinsic.com is a “web-based college platform that provides incentives to students for academic achievement,” according to the site’s “About Us” section. Students create an account for the site where they can bet on the grades they receive for courses or their GPAs for the entire semester.

The idea originated as a joke. The two founders, Jeremy Gelbart and Steven Wolf, made a bet that Gelbart would not ace an upcoming test. Gelbart claimed that he knew he could ace the test if he studied. After Gelbart won the bet, the friends turned their joke into a business venture — starting a year and a half ago at Penn and New York University and expanding to more than 30 other schools this fall.

The first time I heard about this site, I was confused. Gamble on my grades? Why would I do that? My grades are already a gamble. An entire semester’s worth of classes usually dwindles down to a handful of hours spent in front of glaring black-and-white paper for 99.9 percent of your grade. Why add more risk?

The idea of ultrinsic.com is a noble one — help students with the age-old problem of college-induced poverty without much work on the students’ part. But the website's means are questionable. There may be serious problems with prompting students to perform better academically with money.

Ultrinsic is not the only organization considering financial incentives for scholastic success. Junior high schools around the country have attempted to pay students to get them to do what they want whether it is doing well in school, not fighting each other or just showing up.

Harvard economist Roland Fryer, Jr. conducted an experiment proving that monetary gains in exchange for academic performance only works on a case-by-case basis. At the collegiate level, offering small amounts of money does not usually raise the level of motivation.

Students agree that money wouldn’t force them to study harder. “I wouldn’t gamble on my grades because I don’t want to,” College sophomore Seck Barry said. “The money isn’t worth the extra effort.”

By time they reach this level of education, an extra $50 isn’t going to make students spend extra time studying. There isn’t always the desire to do well for the love of learning, but the reward undergraduates may look to receive from their education isn’t purely monetary. With half the effort and none of the risk involved in Ultrinsic, undergraduates can make twice the money with a part-time job. And even if it was all for the money, it would be earnings on a larger scale, not just the couple hundred you could win off of Ultrinsic.

In fact, some weren’t excited about the idea of Ultrinsic. College freshman Noah Goldstein said, “I guess I might use it on my easier classes … and probably only my easier classes.” They were uncomfortable with probability of failure and so attempted to avoid it.

But the surest bet is not for an easy class. You could still be off by one grade level and lose your money. The surest bet is failure. The easiest way to win money would be to bet against your academic performance and then purposely fail. Yet, most Penn students would have a problem with watching their GPA fall full points by the semester just to get some more chump change in their pockets.

Ultrinsic.com can’t create “an ulterior motivation that produces intrinsic love of knowledge” as it claims, because that is not what students are looking for in the site. Students that win money most likely do so because they know their own skill sets and classes better than the site does.

And that’s something you can bet on.

Adrienne Edwards is a College sophomore from Queens, New York. Her e-mail address is edwards@theDP.com. Ad-Libs appears on Wednesdays.

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