Ethical Dilemma

Ethical Dilemma

Mike is a young professional with a wife and two kids. His wife is not employed outside the home. In addition, Mike's mother-in-law lives with them because she is ill and has no money for nursing home care. Mike is working two jobs to make ends meet and also is taking classes online to earn his MBA in the hope that he will earn a promotion when he finishes. Mike receives employer reimbursement for his classes as long as he earns a B or better.

Mike works hard in your course, and though he is not the best student he asks good questions and you can tell he is trying. Mike earns a B- in your course, 2 points away from the B he needs to receive his reimbursement. Mike emails you requesting that he be allowed to do some additional extra credit work to earn the two points he needs to get the B so he will receive his reimbursement from his employer. In his email Mike tells you about his home situation and that if he does not get the reimbursement he can't afford to continue his education because he can't pay the school for this course he just completed. School policy is that instructors are to teach the course as it is written, and that no extra credit work is authorized to be given by any instructor. The college reasoning is that it wants to maintain a high quality program and extra credit work is thought to water down the grading scale degree of difficulty.

If you change the grade, no one will know that you changed it because final grades are not due until next week. What do you do?