Good luck passing Calculus II if you were given a passing grade in Calculus I without actually learning the material. There are plenty of other courses that will run into the same problem if their prereqs aren't actually mastered.
If education is about learning things (and not exams), then it follows the grade doesn’t matter. If a student feels confident they will have learned enough Calc I to take Calc II for the fall semester, then why not let them?
At many Ivy league schools, prereqs serve mostly to tell the students what they should know before taking the class, not as deterrents to actually trying. Often the professors will waive the requirements after a brief interview.
I've seen plenty of 18 year olds in graduate classes, and I've seen highly talented students simply read the books for the prerequisite math classes and do quite well.
My little brother is currently attending RIT and what they did is allow anyone to take any course Pass-Fail. It's not an automatic pass, but it does mean it won't screw over your GPA if events have impacted your ability to perform.
MIT made all classes this semester effectively pass/fail. Makes sense to me. It has been wrenching, with different impact depending on each student's situation.
This has an issue at most schools where a "Passed" class cannot be used as a prereq for another class (Because a D is a pass and a C is required to advance). At my school they had to invent a new type of pass/fail which counts as a pass if you get a C, and can be used as a prereq.
One of the downsides is that from the teacher's perspective, we are not allowed to know who is electing to take this option. So if 90% of our class is taking pass fail and aiming for a C, we still have to grade as usual and wonder: are these kids just not trying or are they not getting the material.
I don't see it being a major issue for a single semester. If they were meant to fail Calc 1 and instead move to Calc 2, that's on them to learn the old material or they will fail.
They'll be forced to relearn the material or continuously fail.
Not to mention, any decent hiring manager that knows of this event, if it does occur, would be more suspect of any graduate of Yale (if they attended during the academic period in question) versus an equivalent Ivy.
As the article mentioned, campus is the great equalizer for students of different backgrounds, so give each student a check for the full retail cost of a semester’s tuition and expenses, paid from the school’s endowment, and remove the class from their transcript.
In the reality of what is about to happen to our world and the US economy and job market, there will be many more job applications than jobs.
I would rather hire the person that graduated from Yale a few years ago versus the one hopefully graduating next year, even for a fully remote position.
In contrast and great irony, my local community college has announced that they will go online and expect full completion as usual - and the students have accepted it, because of course the academic culture at a white label school for tradesmen and transfer students would be more rigorous, serious and refined than the one at a national pride.
Of course! A community college is actually producing students that go on to perform the jobs they are being credentialed for. Having incompetent graduates would be a devastating blow to their reputation.
Demanding a partial refund would be a reasonable thing to try and negotiate: the damage has to fall on someone and both parties have a right to defend their interests. Asking for a free pass, on the other hand, means asking for every other Yale graduate to pay a cost ("You went to Yale? The place with free passes?") while also not asking for the product they really paid for (education). It's a statement that the paper is more important to them than what the paper represents: a total and open admission of defeat by Goodhart's law.
I loved my community college, I wasn’t there for long, only a couple semesters, but after I took calculus I felt like I had put in a lot of work and my life was going in a totally different direction.
I actually ended up buying a hoodie from the college book store in the end and it’s pretty important to me, I don’t feel the same way about the university I graduated from (although I definitely had more fun there.)
At least in my experience community college students mostly went home at the end of the day anyway.
With colleges where the students live at school the process of trying to shift to doing the work at home in contrast to where they had more resources at school seems like it could be quite different.
>According to Eileen Huang ’22, requiring undergraduates — many burdened by sickness, hectic home lives or living thousands of miles away from the University — to devote the same level of attention and focus to their classes as they would in the Elm City seems unfair.
I think there is merit to this concern.
I don't know if passing automaticly is the right choice but experiences durring these events can be quite wide ranging.
Just for me I find that some my neighbors complain they are bored. Me, my kids are at home, I have to manage their schooling, I have to work, my wife needs to work...and the youngest needs constant attention. I've never had less time / sleep.
Now students might not have kids but they too might have a great variety of challenges other students / professors don't have.
I would wager that for the vast majority of students attending Yale that the reduction in social time is way more than the increase in family duties. At least they should have reduced social interactions at this point.
Sure there are some impacted, treat them individually (that's one of the things you pay Ivy league rates for, right?). Wheeling out a sob story of a handful of students in order to grant benefits to everyone just doesn't make sense. The school should be rigorous and push students as best it can.
That's how I viewed school, though, and I realize it is a minority opinion.
To me that's the most compelling argument: equity. Some students come from a background with very few resources and an unstable home environment, or no home to speak of. These students shouldn't be at an academic disadvantage because of a global pandemic.
Equity argument doesn't seem to hold. Why not just give course credits to everyone in USA and not just those who were rich/lucky enough to go to Yale? Would be way more fair, no?
I'm not trying to get into a lengthy discussion so I'll leave it after this comment.
> the reality is, they are.
But Yale admins/faculty have the power to change that. Whether the change is worth it (and what the best course of action is) is a matter for debate. But I wouldn't say that the best course of action is to sit back and say "that's just the reality of the situation" when we have a capability to effect change.
> Now, what happens if this extends for multiple semesters?
> Are all the Ivy schools going to PASS/FAIL online until graduation?
That's certainly not an ideal course of action, but (in my view) it may be what the Ivies are forced to do.
This will prepare them well for reality. Working adults, I am sure, will have their demands for the continuation of their livelihoods fully met by their employers, their landlords, and their mortgage providers.
At least at HLS there's not such thing as an 'A'. You can get an F, LP, P, H, or DS.
DS is not equivalent to an A. DS is insanely hard to get. The professor can only give like 1 or 2 students in the entire class DS so you basically have to be top gun to consistently get DS.
Harvard College (the university's undergraduate arm) definitely gives As. Law schools are vocational programs. I'm not surprised it works differently there.
Obnoxious entitlement? Social pressure? Historical precedent? Why questions can't really be answered. But if you give someone a well-deserved B they cry in your office and then hammer you in their end-of-semester course review.
I asked as a complete ignorant on American grade practices, and your answer differs completely from my (EU) experience - especially because we give reviews before exam sessions.
Students at my college did this too. Just about half of the student body signed the petition. Ultimately the faculty board that makes decisions about grading modes refused to enact this.
Hard to know what's right, under the circumstances. At the same time, it seems like their degrees should have an asterisk, to be fair to full graduates.
How would this make sense? The degree and course grade indicates understanding the material and knowledge of your major. If you haven't been able to learn the material you shouldn't get a degree or grade that indicates otherwise.
If they believe that the quality of education has reduced they should demand a refund, or they can drop the courses they can't handle so that they don't impact their GPA, and retake them once it's easier again.
Undergraduates were forced off campus a few weeks ago.
Imagine yourself in the shoes of an international student who left New Haven in a hurry. You're now required to attend online lectures at 3:00AM local time. Five nights a week.
You don't have a reliable internet connection in your country. You lost your job when you left campus. You're missing out on office hours. You can't collaborate with classmates in the United States. You need to take care of at-risk relatives at home. You're in a state of heightened anxiety during a lock-down. Don't even think about taking a nap! Your next discussion seminar (with mandatory attendance) is in fifteen minutes... at 4:30AM!
Now, is it really so unreasonable to ask the administration to relieve some of this pressure? We should empower students to seek knowledge without sacrificing their health and family obligations.
Relieve pressure, sure. Free pass? What? I mean they still need to do the coursework. The school should refund their tuition and room/board, and allow them to complete the semester later.
Pass/fail grades are not factored into GPA calculations at Yale anyways. The idea behind a "universal pass" system is that it completely eliminates grades for the semester without leaving that section of the transcript empty. It's more akin to a participation trophy than an unmerited gold medal.
I know some BYU students and they were given the option to see their letter grade and decide whether to take the letter grade or a pass/fail for each class. D or F converts to fail, anything else is a pass. Neither changes your GPA.
Exactly. Standards cannot be lowered everywhere. If you don’t have the knowledge to pass your examinations then take additional time to achieve proficiency.
For context, MIT, Harvard and Stanford have all instituted mandatory pass-fail grading policies (in practice, this amounts virtually amounts to a guaranteed pass as well).
A lot of Italian universities took a week to rearrange their complete offering with online courses, allowing full theory + practice + projects lesson in virtual mode - exams solutions are being studied and pass/fail is out of the discussion.
If low-funded Italian universities can do it, I wonder what's stopping the best universities like Yale with enormous quantity of money to do the same.
Same way people do now without degrees? Screening in phases. Live interview or video interview. You can actually tell a decent amount about a candidate over the course of a few hours if you ask right questions.
Perhaps they need to learn the life lesson that bad things happen. Sometimes it's really bad, really unfair. But you can always make the best of it.
It'll be harder for them than others but they can demonstrate an ability to overcome and achieve during hard times. That'll be a huge personal confidence booster for future hard times.
2. What students actually need IMHO is no tuition for this semester, and the opportunity for a do-over next semester (if the crisis is over by then). But that's more difficult to demand, so these people go for an easier, and lamer, alternative.
I had a professor who once quipped "education is the only product for which the consumer demands less than what they paid." The diploma is worthless without the knowledge that goes with it.
We truly live in such amazing times, where the principle of the transaction is more important than the achieved competency. This isn't Walmart, it's an education system. If they're not getting educated, the degree is completely meaningless.
