In a surprise move, the Faculty closed its pass-fail debate after an hour yesterday and voted approval of the plan which will permit students to take one of their four courses ungraded beginning next fall.

The Faculty did not change a word of the legislation approved two weeks ago by its Committee on Educational Policy. This means that when the pass-fail option goes into operation next year, it will be:

* open to all students including freshmen.

* regulated by individual instructors who will decide whether students can take their course passfail,

* adjusted to students' concentration requirements by each department individually.

Near the end of the meeting Oscar Handlin, Charles Warren Pofessor of American History, moved that Harvard's required course load be reduced to three instead of letting one of the present four be taken pass-fail. The motion was defeated by what Dean Ford called "a thunderous voice vote."

Handlin explained last night that he offered his amendments because, in his opinion fourth-course pass-fail "doesn't face up to the real issue. We pretend that there are 6000 roughly comparable courses in the catalogue and that you can add up 16 1/2 of these units and call them a Harvard education. The whole system of courses and credits ought to be reconsidered."

David Riesman '31, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences, spoke against Handlin's amendment, which last night he termed "tricky and even weird." He argued that Handlin's view was worth considering later but that it would be capricious to substitute it now for a plan painstakingly worked out by the Harvard Policy Committee.

'Symbolic Significance'

James S. Ackerman, professor of Fine Arts, used the same argument to support instituting the pass-fail option. The proposal has "great symbolic significance," he said, because it was initiated by students, and Faculty denial "would show that we don't have much faith in them--that we think they would use the added freedom to loaf."

Ackerman, Riesman, and Bruce Chalmers, Gordon McKay Professor of Metallurgy, who introduced the plan, all praised pass-fail as a means of encouraging students to experiment with courses outside their field.

Most of the Faculty debate centered on the effect pass-fail would have on getting Harvard students into graduate schools.

Some Faculty members argued that a series of passes on a student's transcript would be read as C's and would hurt his chances of grad school admission.

Ackerman and others replied that small differences in students' grades make little difference to admissions officials now, and that schools like Swarthmore with much more sweeping pass-fail programs have had no difficulty getting graduate school acceptance for their students.

Yesterday's meeting was one of the largest in the last two years as about 225 Faculty members attended.

Ford had intended not to ask for a Faculty vote on pass-fail until January's meeting, but was "much surprised" by the Faculty's willingness to move the question so quickly.

Because Ford had assured members of several departments that there would be no vote until next month, the Faculty will be asked in January to confirm its approval of pass-fail yesterday.

In the interim, individual departments will be meeting to decide whether students under their jurisdiction can count pass-fail courses toward concentration requirements. Ford said yesterday that he is "reconciled to the probability that there will be a good deal of variety" in those decisions