HPC's Pass-Fail proposal Gets Qualified Backing

Although wary of administrative difficulties, the Faculty may be willing to try out the Harvard Policy Committee's ungraded free fifth course plan, a survey of department chairmen, senior tutors, and other Faculty members indicated yesterday.

The proposal, which the HPC passed Friday and will submit to Dean Monro this week would allow every student to take a fifth course, outside his area of concentration, free of charge. He would be graded in that course by a "pass or fail" designation instead of a letter grade.

F. Skiddy Von Stade Jr. '38, Dean of Freshmen, called the plan "well worth considering" -- "it could encourage people to look outside their fields to find genuine electives," he said. The HPC's rationale for the pass-fail option was that it would allow people to take courses that interested them without taking too much time from courses in their field and without having to compete with concentrators for grades.

But Edward T. Wilcox, secretary to the Faculty Committee on General Education, expressed the fear of several other Faculty members, including those who supported the HPC's proposal in theory, that great increases in course enrollment would be economically and administratively prohibitive.

He predicted that students would pick the already popular courses as their fifth courses, forcing these to limit enrollment. In this case the whole plan would be self-defeating, Wilcox said, because a limited course would have to give priority to those taking it as part of their normal course load.

Some Faculty members enthusiastically supported pass-fail grading, although not necessarily linked to a fifth course.

Oscar Handlin, chairman of the History Department, said that all courses should be graded pass-fail because "the course grading system is eccentric. Trying to tell the difference between an A minus and a B plus is pretty silly. It creates the wrong pressures and makes the grade more important than the course."

"There is too much grade grubbing and not enough learning in the present system," Rustam Z. Kothavala, Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Lowell House, agreed. Kothavala, one of the three Faculty members on the HPC, said that he was "fully in favor of the proposal," and thought that the combination of the pass-fail option with the fifth course would ensure that "people don't use it for roulette."

Others, including David Riesman, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, cautioned that not every student can profitably make use of five courses.

"In five one might learn less than in four; it is terribly important for learning to be able to concentrate your efforts," Riesman said

None of the Faculty members contacted would predict the eventual fate of the proposal, which needs the vote of a majority of the Faculty to be adopted.