An online gambling venue allows Pennsylvania and New York college students to place bets on the grades they are going to get. This method is being expanded to another 30 universities in the US.
If the student obtains a higher grade on the objective that has been marked, the more gains will be made. In the event that you cannot reach the note that has been marked, you will lose all the money. This is the operating method of the Ultrinsic betting website. It is an electronic betting site available for students of the Universities of Pennsylvania y New York. It is expected to be available in a short time at some 30 US universities.
Classes are starting and there is a considerable increase in websites that try to help students reduce their expenses: books and rental apartments, scholarships and jobs to make them compatible with their studies. Ultrinsic uses a different method: it proposes increase students' motivation to get good grades, ultimately to be successful.
It seems that the student went to Las Vegas and the student who is part of this New York portal is betting on his grades. There is a minimum bet: $ 25 per subject. The higher the final grade, the higher the earnings. He even has insurance in case the student does not meet his objective. The owner of the website is called Steven Wolf and declares that it is not about gambling.
This is how the web works. When the student registers, they have to provide all the data pertaining to each subject and give Ultrinsic permission to access the academic history of said subjects. The portal makes a calculation of the probabilities based on previous results or any detail that allows to establish how difficult this subject will be. Based on these data, establish the award.
In principle it is legal. Steven Wolf emphasizes that the student is the owner of this process, it is like investing in Wall Street. "It is not just a bet, it is a motivation", he declares. It is not yet known what the response of the parents and the rectors of the universities in which this betting method is being established during the academic year is.
Years ago, New York launched a method to assess the effort of 9- and 13-year-olds. It was given the name Spark ("cash for notes"). It was not a betting system but a kind of $ 500 scholarship based on the final results.
Some teacher declared that what was tried was to motivate the student so that they obtained better results in mathematics and reading, which were the hard bones of the educational system. The goal was to increase their motivation and make the student more competitive by using money as a claim. This project was endowed with more than 6 million dollars and more than 8.500 families from more than 30 schools took part in this method.
This project was in charge of the Biomedical Engineering faculty at Harvard University. Results were promising at first, and the project spread to Chicago, Washington, and Baltimore. However, they were wrong in their predictions. They thought that a handful of dollars would be enough for students to study more and better. Finally, the students continued studying in the same way as they had always done.
This two-year project was devised by Michael Bloomberg and was created to help economically disadvantaged families. A debate was established about whether it was okay to use money as a way to motivate students as well as all those psychological and moral aspects that had an impact on this project. Furthermore, no data were established on how this method would affect in the long term.