To: Provost Lange and Academic Deans of Trinity and Pratt
Re: Making Duke's First Semester Pass/Fail
Academic culture is undoubtedly the toughest thing to change at a university. Whereas infrastructure, financial strength, admissions and any number of other metrics can be moved by administrative will, academic restructuring happens at a snail's pace.
And rightly so. One needs to look no farther than the recent ousting of Harvard's Larry Summers to see why prudence should always accompany passion for change. One could hardly expect students or faculty to respond favorably to yearly requirement changes in Curriculum 2000 or academic departments. And that's not to mention the number of task forces, select committees, votes and other logistical components.
But there are some changes that, if packaged appropriately, can appeal to the many diverse constituencies to which an administration must answer. Changing first-semester grading at Duke to some variation of a pass/fail system appeals to all. It would represent a leap in our academic life and is fully consonant with where the University is going.
If there has been any attempt at a binding theme at Duke, aside from the recent push for arts, it has been that of intellectual risk. Though it is often sold as interdisciplinary education, the underlying message is that Duke prides itself on treading new ground, on testing options that others might not. (iPods anyone?)
Ultimately, we'd like to see some of this academic chutzpah creep down to undergraduate life. A radical shift in first-semester grading accomplishes just that. By giving freshman the GPA safety net necessary to explore a broad range of classes, we'd send a bold signal to prospective students that they are free to chart their own academic course.
Critics will argue that implementing such a change offers no easy guarantee that students will become intellectual risk-takers overnight. That doesn't matter-this move is about smart PR and trend-setting as much as it is about student exploration. This is about the admissions website and the tour guides. This is about that special insert in the Duke Viewbook that describes, in vivid detail, how this new system reinforces our commitment to interdisciplinary education and all that good stuff.
You may get some blowback from current undergraduates upset that such an option was not available in their days as freshmen. Well, tough cookies. I missed the iPod boat by a year, but like my fellow members of the Class of 2007, I got over it. Changes happen continually, and you can hardly be expected to redress the experiences of older generations.
You will get some resistance from faculty, but I think you'll find that the vast majority would favor this change. This is, after all, one step toward addressing their concerns with pre-professionalism and other weaknesses in the academic culture. Proponents of traditional grading will be greatly outnumbered by faculty happy to be rid of the hair-splitting, nerve-wrecking task of assigning letter grades. I imagine this move would be especially popular among FOCUS faculty, who are among the University's shining stars with respect to undergraduate education.
A pass/fail system can take on many forms. The traditional, two-option "Pass or Fail" model is often too simplistic for universities that send their students to the finest graduate and professional schools. A more robust option, employed by several law schools and medical schools, differentiates between "High Honors," "Honors," "Pass" and "Fail." This offers the faculty more flexibility, but it practically reads "A," "B," "C," and "D." A third option is the "Pass with Written Commendation," "Pass" and "Fail" style. In this method, a faculty member has the option of submitting a written commendation that is included with the student transcript; this gives the faculty the chance to recognize the cream of the crop but still manages to encourage academic risk-the end goal of the pass/fail system.
Whatever form it takes, this shift makes de jure the risks we would like undergraduates to take de facto. Opponents of the change will be vocal, but the University's on-going commitment to fostering a culture of academic exploration mandates that we encourage such adventurousness from Day One.
Jimmy Soni is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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