Note: The Spring 2020 intake was the final MBA/MScIM cohort. The following policies remain in place for student completing this degree.
What is a referral?
- If a student receives an F grade in a course, they will generally be given an opportunity to retake those elements of the course evaluation they previously failed
- If a student's final grade in a course is less than 20 percent, they are not eligible for a referral and have to retake the course
- If a student passes the referral exam, they will be awarded a D grade
What is the referral procedure?
- A notice email for referral will be sent to students who have failed a course within 30 days of the start of the subsequent term
- Payment for the referral is due one month after the email is received by the student. The applicable referral fee of $250 is the cost for a regular course, this payment is done at Cashier’s office in Building 200. There is a $500 fee for rewriting your applied business project and redoing your Internship
- Once a student has paid for the referral, the Graduate Programs Office notifies the instructor about student payment
- Instructors inform students regarding the component to be retaken along with the due dates for the referral
Re-enrolment
Students are given an opportunity to re-enrol in a course or courses, which they have failed previously
- Repeated courses are not constrained in terms of the grade which may be awarded
- Students who repeat a course must pass the course in the second attempt
- Students who repeat a course will not be offered further referral opportunities
- Failure in a second attempt (re-enrolment) in a course will result in dismissal from the program
Advancement to Internship and Applied Business Project (ABP)
- Students must achieve an overall GPA of 2.0 before moving forward to the Internship/ABP
- Any student with two or less courses with an ‘F’ must meet with the Graduate Programs Degree Advisor and register in or have a degree completion plan before being allowed to commence their Internship
- Any student with three or more courses with an ‘F’ or an ‘F’ grade in the Internship course(s) will not be allowed to commence their Internship
- A student in this situation will have to successfully complete the referrals or retake the course to commence their Internship/ABP
- When a student has met all the prerequisite to commencing their Internship, their deferred timelines and due dates will be set by the Associate Dean in consultation with the project supervisor and the internship office
Which institution will I receive my MBA / MScIM degrees from?
On completion of the program, you will receive an MBA degree from Vancouver Island University, Canada, and an MScIM degree from University of Hertfordshire, UK. For specific University of Hertfordshire courses, there is a specific grading process.
UH Degree Approval and Receipt of UH Parchment
- Degrees are approved twice a year at Board Meetings held with the University of Hertfordshire: once in mid-April and once in mid-July. If your grades are posted and you are approved by me to graduate two weeks prior to this meeting, you will be included in this list and your UH degree will be approved during the Board meeting.
- UH Degrees are approved, it takes approximately 2-3 months for the degrees to arrive at VIU. They are then recorded and either mailed to you or held for pick-up, depending on the option that you provided to the Convocation office.
UH Appeal Policy
Appeal procedures for the University of Hertfordshire are available. A further appeal of UH decisions is possible through the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (UK). However, you cannot appeal a UH grade for academic reasons; appeals are only allowed where there is an error in addition or a similar procedural issue. The UH appeal policy applies to the three UH courses (MBA 522, 540 and 541) if you are you are doing the dual degree option.
What is the grading process for the MBA and MBA+MScIM?
View the grading process for MBA courses. Some courses utilize a second marker.