Mid-term Grades

Two weeks ago Provost Buck released the University's preliminary blueprint for war mobilization, and this afternoon the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will have its first chance to pass on the more important features of the plan. One of these features is the compulsory mid-term grades system.

To find mid-term grades on a list of war mobilization measures at this time is surprising. The Administrative Board has already decided that partial or "cumulative" credits are not now a necessity, no doubt figuring that Selective Service will not be calling many men out of College except at the end of a term or year. It therefore seems absurd to link the return to mid-term grades to any string of crucial war measures today.

There are still good reasons for mid-term grades as ordinary peace-time policy. Indeed, the College might well use the added stimulus of a mid-term exam in every course, if only there were not certain complications involved.

Some courses simply do not offer a convenient opportunity for testing knowledge as early as November. Moreover, many professors feel that the best way to keep students on their toes is to require a paper in December and there is no reason to believe that men are better stimulated by tests in November than by papers in December.

Other objections are equally cogent. It is simply a waste of time for a professor and his staff to file a mid-term grade for each student: the grade is sent off, chewed up by an IBM machine, and then filed in a distant archive, to be forgotten forever. Only men with the poorest grades will be hauled up before the Deans and prodded.

We must balance the undoubted benefit of making men work still harder against the disadvantages of forcing a system of mid-term marks on the professors who thus far have found it unadvisable. Besides, current draft policy has already put a new premium on hard work and good marks.