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.

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.

>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.

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.

So how does this compare to Harvard, where students expect an automatic A even without Covid-19?

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.

ETH is continuing online and limiting the downside risk of the next set of exams. That seems like a better approach to me.

Before we jump to conclusions...

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.

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.

I wouldn't want my doctor to be someone who got an auto pass on his/her exams.

or refund the tuition for the semester?

File under: Universities are silly places.

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.

Your Yale degree isn't going to mean anything in the 21st century. Everything that can be learned there can be learned on YouTube for free.

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.

1. It's _some_ students demand automatic pass.

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.

They paid for a service and did not receive it. Many have even been kicked out of housing. Sounds like one party broke the contract regarding tuition.

Pass or not it really makes no difference. College degrees are losing prestigiousness so who cares.

In five years post graduation it really means little. You don't go to college to learn you go there for the degree to get into that first door.