THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT'S announcement Sunday that an unprecedented number of its students don't deserve degrees might suggest that the quality of the Department's teaching has fallen off badly. But the falling-off was probably in the Department's fairness, perhaps because the junior faculty on the examining board carried to an extreme the natural desire of untenured academics to prove their scholarly machismo. The board should not have abruptly changed the standards its grading and previous general examinations had led its students to expect. The full Department, or if necessary Dean Whitlock, should overrule the board. Performance over four years should outweigh the performance of an afternoon.