While undergraduates steeped themselves in course work supposedly completed before Christmas vacation, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences took tea on the first Tuesday of the new year and legislated the present time-honored, time-worn course numbering system out of existence.
Provost Buck explained the move as eliminating yet another anachronism from the College scene. While all course catalogues up till now have presented the undergraduate and graduate with a delightful jumble of numbers, the new listing, beginning with the 1948-49, will use the following system:
Four Classifications
Numbers 1 to 99 will be strictly undergraduate courses; from 100 to 199 will be for undergraduates and graduates; from 200 to 299 represents the domain of the graduate scholar; 300 to 399 are graduate courses of reading and research.
For those whose habits of thinking about courses have become fixed, the Faculty also voted to have the old course number appear in parentheses behind the new number for three years. The new system will affect primarily the large percentage of courses, some of them now with only one or two digits, which have heretofore been designated as undergraduate and graduate material.
The revision, according to Provost Buck, was the result of a year long study by a Faculty Committee which had long regarded the existing system as antiquated.
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