USG looks to revise P/D/F policy

The University’s policy currently stipulates that students declare their intention to P/D/F courses by the end of the fifth week of the semester. Should students choose to rescind the P/D/F option, it must be done by the end of the ninth week, and it will still count towards the total of four classes which may be taken P/D/F over four years.

The policy has long been controversial among students and professors. Many students said the early deadline to elect to take a course P/D/F forces them to choose the option before they know enough about the class to make an informed decision. Professors have also criticized the policy, saying that students who P/D/F their classes seem less engaged. Some faculty members have gone so far as to require that all students in their classes take them for a grade.

In light of these concerns, the USG submitted a proposal in May to move the P/D/F deadline to between the seventh and ninth weeks of a semester. The proposal is now being considered by the administration.

“Under this system, students would remain more actively engaged during the first half of the semester than if they adopted the ‘P/D/F mindset’ from the outset, increasing the likelihood that professors will open their courses to the pass/D/fail option,” USG academics chair Ben Lund ’10 said in a May article on the USG website. “Additionally, students will be afforded the freedom to elect the pass/D/fail option after the midterm examination, when they have the necessary information about the intensity of their workload to make an informed decision.”

When contacted by the ‘Prince’ earlier this week, Lund referred all questions about potential revisions to the policy to Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel. Malkiel declined to comment in an e-mail, saying that she does not discuss “proposals that are being considered in faculty committees while they are still in the process.”

“Once we are done and, presuming that we have a proposal to take forward for faculty action, you will find out about that when the faculty finds out,” she said.

Several students commended the idea of moving the deadline later.

“I think [the deadline to declare P/D/F] should be pushed back about two weeks,” Michael Helou ’12 said, noting that this would allow students to see their midterm grade before making the decision to P/D/F or not.

Stephanie Anderson ’10 said she thought the “deadline to declare the P/D/F is good” but the “deadline to rescind it could be a little later.”

“You need more data points,” she explained. “The midterm is really all the info that you have.”

The option to P/D/F a class has garnered appreciation from many students. Anderson, who elected to take an upper-level sociology class P/D/F this semester, said the P/D/F option is a “safety net” that allows her to “just enjoy learning” without having to worry too much about the grade.

For Mike Hasling ’10, opting to P/D/F HIS 292: Science in the Modern World gave him the opportunity to fulfill a distribution requirement outside his normal course of studies in the operations research and financial engineering department with less consideration for the difficulty of the course. He added in an e-mail that without the P/D/F policy, he “might have taken classes that were easier for me in order to fulfill distribution requirements.”

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Yet Hasling, like many students interviewed, reported that he did not devote as much time to P/D/F courses as those for which he was being graded. Josh Levine ’12 said he chose to P/D/F macroeconomics when he was taking five classes last spring. He added, “I didn’t do shit after I P/D/F-ed it.”

The 150 pages of weekly reading for POL 240: International Relations “intimidated” Michael Chen ’11 into taking the course P/D/F. “I didn’t read anything for POL 240 at all … [but] it was still interesting,” he added. Chen also noted that if the P/D/F option didn’t exist, he would still have taken the course, but he would have done “about twice as much” work.

Anderson said she still completed all the work for the classes she took P/D/F, though they “take a backseat to [her] other courses.”