A somewhat larger college, Swarthmore, discards course grades entirely for 200 of the school's 900 students. They are juniors and seniors admitted to honors because of interest and course grades in their first two years.

These students take only seminars, two a term. Five or six students meet weekly with an instructor, writing papers every other week. Ordinarily one seminar is in the student's own field and the others related. A typical honors program might include four political science seminars, two in history, and two in economics.

Outside Examiners

Instead of being graded, these students are put through 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 this detail, for they feel that they are working with an instructor, not against him, because he neither writes nor reads their examinations.

These colleges have demonstrated that an American college student is capable of excellent work without constant pressure from grades. However, even the fine records of their graduates, in academic pursuits and elsewhere, do not themselves show that the plans would work for large numbers of students.

In the first place, Swarthmore's honors system, which casts grades out entirely, includes only about 200 students, and these are drawn from about 450 matriculating students, already about as highly selected as Harvard's 4400.

Secondly, these faculties are excellent teaching faculties, but while they include individual scholars of renown, they are not centers of research. The teaching and counseling duties constitute a severe handicap to research. At Swarthmore the teacher performs in both seminar and courses, 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 teaching hours per week. With time allowed for preparation, this figure may almost preclude a research faculty.

These objections indicate that these systems cannot be transplanted to Harvard, but we must not therefore neglect the lesson they teach--that grades are not always necessary to education.

Such ideas are also accepted at an institution more readily comparable to Harvard. Yale agrees that students may not need grades, and offers several different programs, existing at once under one faculty and one administration.

While most Yale students take the ordinary course program, increasing numbers of able Elis work more independently under new plans of study.

The first of these is the Scholar of the House program, in which courses are optional for a group of about twelve seniors. They meet biweekly, read papers to each other, and study under the guidance of a tutor.

Divisional Majors Program

Another experiment is the Divisional Majors Honors Program. Not always restricted to honors candidates, this plan offers seminars that cut departmental lines for the last two years, along with tutorial work, additional reading, and possibly some course work on the side. No grades are given in this program which leads to a series of Comprehensive Examinations.

Both these programs embody President A. Whitney Griswold's hope that "just as democracy puts the fulfillment of opportunity up to its citizens, the new Yale College program puts the fulfillment of opportunity up to its students." The Scholar of the House program goes further, but both innovations support Griswold's idea that for "the student of unusual maturity and ability... nothing short of a maximum challenge will evoke a maximum response."

Just how much is Harvard doing to evoke such a response?