Several students claimed in class that our university will give you straight A grades in the semester in which your roommate dies. I said I doubted this claim for two reasons. First, it creates a moral hazard: you are more likely to engage in behavior that would kill your roommate; you might even kill him/her yourself. Second, it will generate adverse selection — people will be more likely to want to room with the dying or those in bad health.
Given these difficulties (and the absurdity of the story), I am 99.99 percent sure that this is a local urban legend. A similar, equally implausible student urban legend at U.T.-Austin is that you receive free tuition for the rest of your college career if you are injured by a university-owned vehicle. I don’t see any adverse-selection problem here, but it sure creates a moral hazard!
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Same rumor flew about the University of Rochester campus when I went there in the early ’80s.
Come to think of it, there was the opportunity to see if it was true… a student slipped in the tub and died during xmas break one year – could have asked his roommate if it was true. On second thought, it happened between semesters, so it might have been a moot point.
I heard, but never believed, the same rumor about getting straight A’s if your roommate dies while in college, too. In 1987, in San Antonio. It is a hearty myth!
It is not a local urban legend. It has been around since at least the 1980′s at many schools. I generally heard it as a 4.0 if your roommate committed suicide. Sometimes a 3.5 or some other number for a non-suicide death. Many roommates have looked at each other during finals week and joked about which one of them was going to sacrifice himself (herself? Do women make the same poor-taste jokes?) for the others.
Unfortunately, yes, women make these jokes as well. I have heard many variations on this rumor at the Air Force Academy as well. If this does tragically happen, though, teachers would likely grant extensions on major for those students. Maybe that was where the rumor originated?
My roommate got straight A’s when I died but she had to take a loan to get ‘em. This was at University of Phoenix. The robo-dean told her the loan prevented moral hazard.
I’ve heard that about many universities. Definitely urban legend.
http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/suicide.asp
The only one of these that makes sense is the free tuition if you get hit by a university vehicle. If that is the offer versus a lawsuit that might generate hundreds of thousands or even millions, then it is clearly in the university’s interest to do this. It is also then in the school’s interest to keep this rumor alive, true or not, because that helps set the expectation level lower than if people heard that you could sue and collect. I’m not saying this rumor is true, only that there is at least some rationality to it.
Just want to chime in that it was claimed at St. Louis University too in the early 2000s. Someone map all the responses and let’s see how this spread.
Assuming it is true, why do people take pity on your grades when a death occurs? If anything, deadlines should be graciously extended.
“You don’t have to learn this stuff, because we feel sorry for you.”
NOT the way the world works.
Get a degree because you know something, not because people pity you.
If you think people get college degrees because they know something you’re the one who has missed how the world works. I won’t say it has never happened, but I’d put my money on *vanishingly seldom* and the highest possibility for the thing known being a dark secret of the Dean’s.