Melanie, This is a great post with great examples. Your questions are very interesting. I can only provide my opinion here, which is, if a student understands that the course they are taking will not meet the qualifications needed to be certified but makes the decision to proceed, then that's their choice (again, as long as the institution if truthful and providing full disclosure). Otherwise, we have a real ethical issue here, don't we? In the last case, some outside of the box thinking could be very beneficial to both the student and the institution, right? Sarah Smoger