Faculty May Let Departments End Tutorial Grades

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will vote this Tuesday on a proposal that in effect would allow non-graded senior tutorials in some departments.

If the Faculty approves the measure, Government and Economics senior tutorials will probably be non-graded this year.

The proposal has already been approved by the Committee on Educational Policy. It came from the Government and Economics departments, but would apply to any department that wants to make a similar change. No others have so requested.

Tutorial will still be for credit, so this would mean a non-graded fourth course for some students.

Richard E. Caves, chairman of the Economics Department, said yesterday that the change would simply "delete an essentially meaningless grade from the record."

Since senior tutorial is designed for students writing theses, grading tutorial and a thesis is a superfluous "double counting," Caves said.

The awarding of honors -- based on tutorial work, grades, and senior thesis--will remain basically unchanged in Ec, but with one less grade on a student's record, he said.

The Government Department made its request last year. The CEP did not act then, so the department merely made its senior thesis grades exact equivalents of its students thesis grades.