Last semester, Dept. of Physics dismissed two MA students, and it was the first case of dropping out graduate students in TKU. Many of those who were not dropped out but on the edge of flunking, some of them would be kicked out from school if they failed one more course. Chair Chang Ching-lin arranges a special course on “Quantum Mechanics” this semester, in which the post-doctoral researcher Lee Chung-chieh is to guide and assist these graduate students after school. “Students study harder than ever this semester,” Chair Chang said.

Chair Chang indicates that the quality of graduate students in Dept. of Physics is not low. The main reason that many students fail the courses is that teachers are very serious at grading. They never give casual or mindless grades. In Dept. of Physics, graduate students have to take five required courses. If they get grades under 70 points, they will fail the course. According to the school regulation, if they fail four courses, they will be dropped out from school. Even National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University and National Chiao Tung University have no such kind of rule.

Prof. Chang worries for many graduate students who are on the verge of being dropped out. A parent sent a letter to protest against the rule and considered it as very unreasonable. This parent pointed out that his child was busy on experiments everyday so he might neglect other schoolwork. He accepted the professor’s flunking his child, but he hoped that school could give students a chance to make up the course again.

Therefore, in the meeting of College of Science held last week, Chair Chang proposed that school could cancel the dropping-out rule and offer students a chance to retake the course they failed. He said that some students might not perform well in class, but they often had potential for multi-dimensional development, and they would often be more outstanding than others in their professional field in the oncoming future.