Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 13 August 2010 / Leave a Comment

A few days ago I was watching a documentary about a musical group, and in the film each member of the band recounted how he'd first gotten involved in music. One explained how as a youngster he coveted his own guitar, and his parents promised him that if he brought home a stellar report card they'd get him one for Christmas. He got the grades, and thus the guitar. (And, eventually, the girls, the glory, and a lot of greenbacks.)

It was a familiar story of a young student being provided a little extra incentive to perform in the classroom. This week the Associated Press reported a story that involved the same idea of providing extra motivation to students, although in this case the idea has been taken (literally) to a higher level -- to higher education, that is.

According to the AP story, a new website named Ultrinsic is offering U.S. college students an opportunity to place real money wagers on the grades they make. The site began last year at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, and beginning this fall has expanded to schools across the country. Beginning with the upcoming fall semester, students at 36 different schools will be able to register with the site, submit their schedules (and access to their grades), then place bets on the grades they expect to make.

Students can wager on the grades they'll earn in particular courses, what their semester grade point average will be, or even whether or not they'll finish their college careers with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Less confident students can also bet on their own failures (in a sense) by purchasing something called "grade insurance" which appears to be a bet on making an "F" in a given class.

The AP story reports how questions have arose regarding the legality of the website. According to Oskar Garcia, who authored the piece, Ultrinsic "CEO Steven Wolf insists this is not online gambling, which is technically illegal in the United States, because wagers with Ultrinsic involve skill."

Garcia is mistaken to make that blanket statement about online gambling being illegal in the United States, which sounds as though it is illegal for U.S. residents to gamble online. It is not (although some individual states do have laws prohibiting such). It is, however, "technically illegal" at present to operate an online gambling website in the United States, and will remain so unless a bill like H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act, successfully makes its way through Congress and becomes law. (Read more about H.R. 2267 and its current status here.)

So is Ultrinsic (based in New York) an "online gambling" site?

"The students have 100 percent control over it, over how they do," says Wolf in defense of his site. "Other people's stuff you bet on -- your own stuff you invest in." His explanation is not the most eloquent, but you get the point. Wolf thinks the grades one receives in college classes are entirely under the student's control, and therefore are fundamentally different from, say, betting on the outcome of a sporting event in which one is not personally involved.

The article goes on to quote I. Nelson Rose, the law professor at Whittier Law School in California who has frequently been called upon to comment on the legality of online gambling in the United States. Rose correctly points out that it is problematic to characterize the grade one receives in a college class as "entirely within the control of the (player)," citing examples of unscrupulous teachers handing out grades that don't necessarily match students' achievement. In other words, there may well be an element of chance here that would help make betting on grades be interpreted as a form of gambling.

What do I think about the Ultrinsic website and its offer to college students to bet on the grades they receive? While I'm generally a "live and let live" type who firmly believes adults should be allowed to gamble on whatever they wish, I have to admit I don't like the site at all, for a few reasons.

For one, a quick perusal of Ultrinsic -- a bare-bones portal with little information for prospective clients -- should give any critical-thinking visitor a negative impression. In fact, Ultrinsic reminds me quite a bit of those "paper mill" sites that offer college essays for purchase, right down to the cynical pronouncement on the opening page that "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."

Secondly, while I support adults' right to gamble, I think too much importance is already placed on the significance of grades in college, and thus oppose this artificial means of making grades seem to matter even more. Obviously grades are necessary -- there has to be a way to measure student achievement and determine whether a student rightly deserves the degree he or she is pursuing. But it is a big mistake to reduce the significance of the college experience down to a few letters on a computer-generated report.

Finally, the whole thing seems a little childish, doesn't it?

Giving a youngster a guitar for making all A's? Fine. But unlike the kid in grammar school, the college student (theoretically) chose to be there, and should be mature enough not to need extra motivation to study and learn.

I hate to do it, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to give Ultrinsic a failing grade. I hope for their sake they bought insurance.

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