In recent semesters, a quiet but noticeable shift has been taking place in UPLB’s academic culture. More and more, student organizations have begun asking faculty members to grant academic incentives to students who attend their events. These incentives come in different forms: quiz bonuses, extra points on class standing, or even outright exemptions. Often, the activity is not tied to the course’s content or assessment, and no real academic output is required. Just showing up becomes enough to earn credit.
At first glance, this might seem harmless. After all, who does not want an event with a packed audience? But we need to ask ourselves: Is this really the kind of engagement we want to promote? When we start treating academic credit as a marketing tool, we begin to blur the line between meaningful academic effort and symbolic participation. In the long run, this practice turns dangerously close to the much-criticized participation trophy mentality.
Why It Matters
UP’s academic credit, even just a few bonus points, should never be reduced to a promotional tool. When students are rewarded simply for being present, without any intellectual engagement or effort, we risk undermining the value of learning itself.
This concern is rooted in academic evidence. A large body of research warns against over-relying on external rewards in education. The landmark meta-analysis of Deci et al. (1999) showed that tangible rewards often weaken students’ intrinsic motivation, especially when these rewards are not connected to meaningful learning. Butler (2000) found that students exposed to performance-based incentives tend to learn only at the surface level, focusing on getting points rather than gaining understanding. Reeve (2012) emphasized that strong learning environments nurture autonomy, relevance, and the joy of discovery — not transactional mindsets.
When academic rewards are given without academic effort, we risk sending the message that presence is equivalent to learning. As Kohn (1993) put it, “the more we reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.”
What We Risk Normalizing
The deeper concern is cultural. We risk normalizing a system where students expect academic rewards for extra-academic participation. This leads to a culture where learning is treated as a game of points, not a journey of curiosity. It also creates equity issues. Not every student can attend every event — some are juggling jobs, conducting caregiving duties to younger siblings or sick elderly, or preoccupied with other responsibilities. Should they be academically disadvantaged just because they could not spare the time?
And what could be said of the events themselves? When the main draw becomes the bonus points rather than the content, what does that say about their inherent value? If we allow the narrative to persist — that a good event is one with lots of attendees chasing incentives — we reduce our own student activities to checkbox exercises rather than opportunities for genuine growth.
A Call for Reflective Mentorship
This is not a critique of student-led activities. UPLB has a vibrant tradition of student-organized events, and many of these are enriching, even transformative. But we need to be clear: not every valuable experience requires academic credit. Recognition should follow effort, engagement, and reflection.
That is why I am calling especially on fellow faculty members, particularly those who advise student organizations, to help steer this culture in a more reflective direction. Let us mentor our students with academic integrity in mind. If they want academic tie-ins, let us support them in designing activities that involve critical thinking, academic reflection, or skills application that connect clearly to course outcomes.
To our students: your events matter, not because of how many people show up, but because of the conversations they start, the insights they provoke, and the ways they help you grow. If you feel the need to dangle academic incentives just to boost numbers, ask yourselves why. Are you proud of the event for what it is, or just worried no one will come without a reward? Requests for academic incentives as a fallback tell us that your event may not stand on its own.
Let us be clear: academic credit is not a promotional tool. It is an earned recognition of effort, reflection, and intellectual engagement. Let us work together to protect this principle and keep UPLB’s academic culture grounded in meaningful learning. UPLB’s student organizations are proven capable of far more than just drawing crowds. They can challenge ideas, inspire peers, and lead change. The UPLB academic community must uphold the standards that make such achievements meaningful.
References
Butler R. (2000). What learners want to know: The role of achievement goals in shaping information-seeking behavior. In C. Sansone & J.M. Harackiewicz (Eds.) Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance (pp. 161–194). Academic Press: San Diego, CA, USA (DOI: 10.1016/B978-012619070-0/50029-5).
Deci EL, R Koestner & RM Ryan. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin 125:627–626 (DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627).
Kohn A. (1993). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA, USA, pp 448 (ISBN: 9780618001811).
Reeve J. (2012). A self-determination theory perspective on student engagement. In S.L. Christenson, A. Reschly & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement (pp. 149–172). Springer: Heidelberg, Germany (DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_7).
Note: This article draws on insights from educational psychology, motivation theory, and the learning sciences. Insights from these fields are important inputs for improving course design and pedagogy in computer science education, developing user-centered and immersive human-computer interfaces, building socially responsible digital platforms for internet-mediated communities, modeling human cognition and reasoning in artificial intelligence, and designing nature-inspired algorithms.
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