Some Reservations

Reed is not certain that its system is best, but the Dean of Students, Ann W. Shepard, writes, "While I frequently have real doubts of the wisdom of our closed grades, I still feel they probably do as much as can be done to under-emphasize what is after all an arbitrary symbol of an instructor's best estimate."

Grades at Bennington are kept only for graduate school references, without even the cryptic sort of communication to students Reed may employ. Written reports and weekly meetings with a counselor tell students of their progress.

Dean Thomas P. Brockway says, "There is no doubt that there are students here who are working in one or more of their courses because they want a favorable report at midterm and termend. But I should say that these reports can be ends in themselves to a much lesser degree than the old A, B, C, or 70% and better or worse."

Swarthmore's System

A somewhat larger college, Swarthmore, discards course grades completely for one group of students, juniors and seniors in "honors," who take only seminar. 200 of the school's 900 students take this program, chosen because of interest and course grades in their first two years. (A laboratory science or a thesis may replace one of the seminars for some individuals.)

These seminars, meetings of five or six students with an instructor, are held weekly, and students write papers every other week for each seminar, or one a week per student, since two seminars are taken every term of the last two years. Ordinarily one seminar falls in the student's own field, with the other in a related subject. A typical honors program might include four political science seminars, two in history, and two in economics.

For these seminars the students are not graded, but instead they take a heavy battery of general examinations, both written and oral, in the spring of their senior year. These examinations are prepared not by the Swarthmore faculty but by outside examiners, who serve to prevent academic inbreeding. Students have high praise for the system, saying, "it means you're working with an instructor, not against him," because he neither writes not reads their examinations.

Demonstrate Capability

What Swarthmore, and to a lesser extent Reed and Bennington, have done is to demonstrate that an American college student is capable of excellent work without constant pressure from grades. Most educational institutions in the country do not recognize this.

But the fine record of their graduates, even when measured in such strictly academic terms as high per cent of graduate school admissions or fellowship awards, does not establish the applicability of their system to large numbers of students. Swarthmore's the most thorough in its discard of grades, includes only about 200 students, and these are drawn from a group of 900 which is already about as highly selected as Harvard's 4400.

One of the factors that makes the Swarthmore program particularly interesting for Harvard is that Swarthmore itself has recently experienced difficulties in keeping up the interest of nonhonors, or "course" students. The school, under President Courtney C. Smith '38, a Harvard Overseer, is currently working to reduce the stigma of not going out for honors, for by setting off half its upperclassmen in a distinctive program, Swarthmore has created morale problems for the others.

The relevancy of these programs to Harvard is decreased by another factor; the faculties at these institutions are excellent teaching faculties, but while they include individual scholars of renown, they are not centers of research. Even within this teaching framework, counseling duties, when added to the normal routine of life in a college community, constitute a severe drain on time and energy. At Swarthmore, the teacher performs in both seminar and course, and this can result in a schedule requiring the equivalent of five half courses and two one-term seminars in a year, or an average of up to thirteen hours teaching per week. With time allowed for preparation, this figure may almost preclude a research faculty.

The most significant lesson that can be drawn from these experiences does not suggest transplanting their systems to Harvard, but shows that students, especially superior students, can grow in education without frequent prodding from grades. Such ideas are also accepted at an institution more readily comparable to Harvard.

Yale Enters In