A WOMAN'S bid for $1.3 million damages from her university and an upgrade of a C+ grade that destroyed her hopes of a career as a professional counsellor has been rejected by a court.

Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano dismissed Megan Thode's civil action after four days of testimony at Harris County Court in Houston, Texas.

Thode, 27, had sued her university, Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for breach of contract and sexual discrimination. She claimed the $1.3 million was the amount of money she lost and would have earned if she had been a professional counsellor.

Judge Giordano said that as a father, he would be unhappy if what happened to Thode at Lehigh had happened to one of his children, The Morning Call reported.

But Thode had nonetheless failed to prove her grade was based on anything other than "purely academic evaluation" and her professor's conclusion that she "was unprepared to move on to the next level" of her course.

Thode, whose father Steven is university's finance professor and who attended the university free of charge, was given the C+ in her master's fieldwork class in 2009. She needed a B or higher to take the next course and her lawyer claimed the grade unfairly destroyed her hopes of becoming a licensed professional counsellor.

The verdict upheld that "the university faculty have the responsibility to fairly evaluate the work of their students, and that academic rigor should not be compromised," said Gary Sasso, dean of Lehigh's College of Education.

"We feel very badly for Megan Thode. We hope that in the future she goes forward and does good things. We remain open to conversations with her about her readmission into that program, into our program, and into that class."

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