Debate Begins Over Student Grade Gambling Website

A new website, Ultrinsic.com, is giving college students around the US the opportunity to place bets on their future grades. A variety of factors go into calculating the odds, and over thirty-five schools are listed on the site.

Indiana University is one of those schools and officials are unsure why they are included on the betting site. To the officials, it appears as though the site is only for gambling purposes, but the operators of the site disagree.

"It gives them (students) something to put them over the top as far as studying," said COO Judah Guber. "Two of the more important factors (for including Indiana) were its record for being a good school academically, combined with the fact that it has a premiere athletic program."

While the site defends its service, others are skeptical of the motives. There are a growing number of critics that are concerned this will be another dangerous form of gambling for college students.

"Even if their intentions are to make students work harder to get good grades, the truth of the matter is they are preying on the instinctive gambling nature of college-aged students," said Maria Belville. "They are using the grades as a facade to make millions of dollars."

The students can receive varying odds depending on their grade history and the challenge of the class they are betting on. If they started betting on the site as freshman, there is a chance they could make a couple thousand dollars by the time they graduated with a four year degree. Whatever the motive, Indiana officials broke it down to its simplest form.

"It looks like gambling to us," said Indiana University Spokesman Larry MacIntyre.

August 15, 2010
Posted By Tom Jones
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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