Word: pass-fail
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Admittedly, students who concentrate their efforts on academics would have a more difficult time proving their excellence without letter grades. However, because only the final course grade would be pass-fail, instructors could identify their most brilliant students by performances on tests and assignments. When the time came for these students to apply for jobs and graduate schools, they could ask for recommendations from those instructors familiar with their work. Likewise, instructors could identify floundering students needing extra help by nothing who performs poorly...
...Unfortunately, this most likely would place gregarious students and students in smaller departments at an advantage. Those who are friendly with their instructors would obtain both more insightful recommendations and more attention to their academic difficulties. But this drawback results from the impersonality of a big university, not the pass-fail concept. Students get lost in the academic jungle under the current system...
...most substantive argument against a pass-fail system is that students would stop working hard if they knew no one else could tell whether they had done A or B, or C level work. This concern would be especially great during the new system's implementation. Believing their late-night study orgies finished forever, students would go positively wild--and probably a little bit lazy...
Spring classes were graded pass-fail in order to allow students more time for protesting. President Nathan Marsh Pusey '28 was crucified by the campus press for his apolitical stance in the fall...
...what are these lists there for? Chiefly, it appears, to spark controversy and sales, particularly when Bloom gets around to handing out pass-fail grades to 20th century writers (see box). But for all the prepublication hype it has aroused, Bloom's back-of-the-book grab bag of ancient and modern writers forms the least interesting part of The Western Canon...