It has the feel of a viral hoax, but it seems legit -- or as legit as a company that allows students to wager on their grades can be.
A company called Ultrinsic lets students put money on their college classes, betting that they can achieve specific grades. The odds are tougher for higher grades, of course, so (for example) a $10 bet that you'll get a C may pay off at even money, while wagering on an A may bring in a 2 to 1 payoff (we're only guessing at the actual odds; the Ultrinsic website is somewhat stingy with the details, at least to non-members. The blank FAQ page is also fun).
Ultrinsic is gambling that most will interpret this as an incentive, obviously resembling parents who pay their children for good grades. They're not alone; a number of school districts are picking up on the idea of dangling cash in front of children to motivate better grades. A Chicago high-school-level program offers $50 for each A, for example, and the "Learning Makes a Difference Foundation" is actually paying children to go to after-school tutoring.
Interestingly, the only relevant scientific study shows that money does get results -- and kills interest. A University of Rochester study showed that college students who weren't paid to solve puzzles generally kept at it once the study was over, while the paid group almost exclusively abandoned the puzzles completely. This begs the age-old question: would you still do your job if you weren't paid for it?
That question may be too simplistic, of course. Obviously the benefits of a well-rounded education generally exceed the benefits of the average job (most of which consist of proprietary skills and a familiarity with the internal bureaucracy).
Or do they? It's a poorly-kept secret that colleges are even more than ever little more than a sandbox for 'potential workers' and 'potential consumers'. The motivated ones tend to be much less interested in learning than they are in setting themselves up for a decent-paying career, and of course the less-motivated ones subsist on a diet of experimental extracurricular indulgence and trendy, fact-free theory courses (in which agreement with the professor's world-view is usually worth at least one grade higher). Ultrinsic may be simply a minor side-note to the elevation of commercial pragmatism over true learning and personal growth.
This year, Ultrinsic is expanding from offering its 'service' to two colleges (NYU and Penn) to a moderately whopping 36 colleges (including Princeton and Rutgers). The company's CEO, Steven Wolf, refuses to name the investors, or how much they staked.
He also denies that this is online gambling, using the word "incentive" as often as possible. The website compares the company to businesses that offer bonuses for employees that find ways to cut costs, or to insurance companies that offer discounts for certain healthy practices (the website does not have a single instance of the words "gambling", "gamble", or "bet", though the phrase "motivational wager" is used).
Of course, Ultrinsic needs to verify your details, so they'll need your school email and access to your school records. And you'll almost certainly need to provide them with an official transcript (so if you're at a school that charges per transcript, there goes a chunk of your winnings right there).
Objections are surprisingly sparse at this point, though there is some worry that professors could trade grades for a cut of the profits. Minimizing such worries is the size of the payoff, which is rather small even in the best outcomes. The most that the company offers is the four-year parlay, which could potentially net the student $2000 for a 4.0 GPA (though at the 38 colleges served, $250 per semester is less than one percent of expected costs. It will buy about ten cases of beer, though).
However, the biggest flaw in the model seems to be that the company also offers "insurance", which pays if you fail; sure, you can make more money successfully betting on good performance, but it's hard to argue with a sure thing. After all, you can sometimes fail by accident, but you can pretty much count on failing on purpose -- which is why sports pros betting on themselves is generally considered to be a no-no!
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