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<p>No doubt, he badly overestimated his technical skills and jumped into coursework that was far too advanced for him. For example, he thought that his AP coursework permitted him to jump ahead to math 54, Physics 7B, and other courses that he didn’t realize were notorious weeders. He should have eased into his Berkeley coursework. He was wrong, and he freely admits that he was wrong. He made a serious mistake - nobody is denying that. </p>
<p>But like I said, no matter how severe of a mistake that may be, should he really have to pay for that for the rest of his life? He was merely 17 years old - still not a legal adult - when he embarked upon that difficult coursework. Most minors who are convicted of petty crimes will have their cases remanded to juvenile court where the records of the proceedings will be sealed and the conviction will be wiped from his record after a few years of clean living. Similarly, a personal bankruptcy, as a matter of Federal law, will be wiped from your credit record after a 7-year period. Moving violations will be eliminated from your driving record after a certain waiting period. But failing grades remain on your academic record for life. </p>
<p>Why? He didn’t rob anybody, he didn’t punch anybody out in a fistfight, he didn’t stiff his creditors, and he didn’t endanger the public through unsafe driving. The only person he hurt was himself. If evidence of poor driving, poor personal financial management, and even petty crimes will be eventually wiped from your record, what’s so outrageous about the notion of wiping out failing grades too? </p>
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<p>Fair enough. If you don’t have sympathy for him, then I would argue that you shouldn’t have sympathy for all of the students in creampuff majors who have 2.5’s or less, for I would argue that those students are just as irresponsible as the engineers who flunk out. The only reason why those students manage to stay at all is because the creampuff majors simply never confer truly bad grades. </p>
<p>Which leads back to the question that I must continue to ask: if we should kick out all of the unmotivated and irresponsible engineering students, why don’t we kick out all of the unmotivated and irresponsible American Studies students as well? Why single out the engineers? </p>
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<p>While I can’t speak for other state universities, I would say that that argument gains little sway at Berkeley, which already rejects the vast majority of applicants, particularly within admissions to the engineering programs. Let’s face it: there’s practically no difference between rejecting 80% of your applicants - as Berkeley does now - versus rejecting 85% of your applicants. Either way, you’re still rejecting the vast majority of your applicants. But that final 5% of admittees surely represents a large chunk of students who are likely to perform poorly. </p>
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<p>I could actually argue that the opposite might be true. We have to keep in mind that there isn’t a fixed number of jobs in engineering (or any industry for that matter). The number of jobs in any industry is a function of the economic health of that industry, which is itself determined by the talent level of the people in that industry. For example, if more talented and creative people are drawn to study engineering, more innovation and entrepreneurship will be spurred, hence increasing the overall demand (and hence salaries) of engineers. Just consider all of the engineering/CS jobs spawned by the social networking and smartphone/tablet boom.</p>