Dismissal

Recently in the news in Abu Dhabi is a story about how Abu Dhabi University dismissed 126 students for poor academic achievement. In this article, the school then apologized to the parents of the students. I got pretty annoyed when I saw the headline, but after reading further, I realized that the administration wasn't apologizing for the actual dismissal, but for dragging out the time it took to dismiss the students.

The students had been given three warnings about their poor academic performance then were allowed to continue for an extra five semesters after they should have been dismissed. In effect, the parents had to pay for an additional five semesters of tuition that they wouldn't have. (Abu Dhabi University is a private institution so not government sponsored like where I work, HCT).

While I agree with the sentiment that parents should be annoyed about two and a half years of tuition, I don't think that it was a scheme to get as much money out of the parents as the school could. Instead, I feel that it's the bad habit that schools have gotten into of saying, "OK, this is the last time. All right then, one more chance, but this is the real last time..." What's more, it's usually the parents that push for, "one more chance."

I understand that there are two sides to the story. I feel Abu Dhabi University has set a great standard for cutting loose these students who have been given a number of chances . I just hope that they don't back down on this.