Grading System
UC Santa Cruz may be in shock when abandoning its 30-year system of pass/no record, a written appraisal of student work by faculty rather than the customary letter grade (“ ‘F’ Is for Future Shock at Santa Cruz,”Oct. 24).
This educational revision comes as no surprise to veteran faculty in the Department of History at UC Santa Barbara. In 1968, a delegation of historians from that department traveled to the new and developing campuses of UC to observe the manner by which they were building the Brave New World of an expanding University of California. We were lectured with unqualified enthusiasm at UC Santa Cruz on the virtues of the written-appraisal grading system which, on the return journey, was described with his usual perspicacity by the late, distinguished medievalist, C. Warren Hollister: “A paragraph of precious prose can always be succinctly summed up by a simple letter grade.”
ROBERT O. COLLINS
Professor of History, Emeritus
UC Santa Barbara
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