HPC To Survey Student Reaction To Fifth Course

The Harvard Policy Committee will soon ask all undergraduates whether they would take a fifth course if it were given without extra charge and were graded only on a "pass-fail" basis.

A questionnaire will be distributed shortly after the Thanksgiving recess to find out how many students would take advantage of the 'pass-fail' system, which was proposed by the HPC to Dean Ford last month and will probably be discussed in the Faculty next semester.

Two Questions

Only two questions will be asked about the fifth course option: "If you had the chance, would you take such a course next year?" and "What course would you take?"

The main purpose of the questionnaire is to find out the impact the proposal would have on the size of various courses. By assembling these statistics, the HPC hopes to give College officials some idea of how much the plan would cost and how many courses would be significantly altered by the addition of new students. The Administration is said to be worried not only about expense, but also about the problem of finding space for large lecture courses.

Fine Arts Would Grow

"No one has any idea about what courses people would take," Ronald L. Trosper, '67, HPC's chairman, said yesterday. The only "consistent guess," he said, is that many more people would take Fine Arts 13 and Music 1, both introductory departmental courses.

Although a fifth course would be ungraded under the HPC's proposal, a student could not drop the course once he had enrolled unless he received special permission from the Administrative Board. In addition, the pass-fail course could not be taken to make up a deficiency or accelerate toward earlier graduation.

50% Response

The questionnaire will probably be distributed either the Monday or Tuesday following the Thanksgiving recess. Trosper said he hopes for at least a 50 per cent response from undergraduates.

The HPC began studying the fifth course plan last year. Three other Ivy League schools -- Brown, Penn, and Princeton -- have adopted versions of the pass-fail system.