By Leonardo Cervantes
Assembly Bill 811 would allow students to repeat courses they already took at community colleges for skill-building and life-long learning.
This bill would allow students to repeat courses such as arts, foreign languages and humanities twice.
Allowing students to retake courses is a great idea with not many downsides.
Depending on when the course was taken, this can be beneficial. For example, many students begin by taking the required English and math courses they need for their degrees.
Once a student finishes an English course they most likely never revisit English again. After a couple months or even years, students may forget specific topics on subjects.
The bill would allow them to retake the course and get a refresher on topics.
Some students want to improve their grade point average and aren’t satisfied with barely passing a class.
Sometimes because of a personal or emotional reasons, students get distracted and struggle with a certain course.
This bill would allow students to right their wrongs and earn the grade they feel they deserved.
If a student got a C in arts but they know how talented they are, it would be a good idea to retake the class.
A downside of this bill would if a student fails a class they are taking for a second time.
A nightmare scenario would be a student passing a class the first time but failing the second time they take a class.
Students should be advised to only retake a course if they’re confident they can pass the class.
It’s a risk-reward that students should take precautions when thinking of retaking classes.
If a student got a B the first time they took the course, it isn’t necessary for them to retake the class.
However, some students like to be as perfect as possible and take pride in receiving A’s.
A student that recieved a B in a course should not retake the class since its not a massive boost to their GPA.
Overall it just depends on how confident the student is and how easy the course is to them.
The benefit of retaking a class in humanities for example would lead to an improvement in communication and social skills.
A lot of humanity classes require interaction from all students.
Retaking these types of classes can help remove social fear or in general improve simple tasks like reading out loud in front of the class.
Overall this bill is great, especially for students who are confident they can earn a similar or higher level grade than before.
The bill would also require colleges to provide priority registration for credit courses to students who require the course for their intended major and to students who have not taken the course.