Sacramento State’s Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE) continues to hold a failure rate of nearly 40 percent.

WPE Coordinator Jonathan Price said there is not one specific problem leading to the high amount of failures.

“Papers don’t quite make it because people don’t know how to write,” Price said. “A lot of people fail because their writing has been passed by other teachers.”

Price said contributing factors are problems in grammar, mechanic, and not giving a convincing argument.

“There is no single absolute thing that I can say is the number one problem,” Price said.

Price said students are strongly encouraged to attend the WPE workshops held a week before each exam. He said that the workshops do help some students.

English Professor Ursula Crabtree Denatale has graded the WPE for several years. She said there are two recurring mistakes students make when taking the exam.

“The students who write less than two pages fail for brevity and lack of development, while the students who write eight pages have such disastrously poor grammar,” Crabtree Denatale said.

The number one problem, according to Crabtree Denatale, is that the WPE is outdated.

She said the current generation of college students is brought up on computers with spell check to help them write.

“I teach 109W, these are graduating seniors who have failed the WPE,” Crabtree Denatale said. “They are incredibly bright students who can’t write.”

If a student fails the WPE, then the student is given one more chance to re-take the exam.

If the student fails the exam a second time, the student is then subjected to take the 109W class that aids in the essay-writing process.

Price said there are no plans to change the WPE at this time.The exam requirement, enacted by the CSU Board of Trustees in 1977, was a response to employers’ complaints that college graduates lacked necessary writing skills.

Students must pass this exam in order to graduate.The cost of the exam is $25, an amount that was capped as maximum at the exam’s origination.

Price said the fees are paid out to graders and proctors, with less that $2.50 going to school cashiering.

A check of CSU’s by The State Hornet revealed that Stanislaus and Northridge have nearly 80 percent pass rates and Cal Poly has a 66 percent pass rate on their writing exams.