Yale's Rubicon

The moment it was done, all Yale was glad. Professor Nettleton, whose committee spurred Yale to do it, talked delightedly of a faculty "awakened to find itself blessed." The Yale News, which had wanted to do it before, acclaimed "one of the greatest educational advances Yale has ever made." The Alumni Weekly declared that the College had "crossed the Rubicon." What made Yale so happy last week was that the faculty had at last screwed itself up to the point of plumping for "Departmental" examinations like those which Harvard has.

Barred to Yale's present sophomores and to all their successors will be the familiar U. S. method of getting a college degree by accumulating credits for courses passed. Future Yalemen must take and pass the same annual course examinations which Yalemen take now. But planted squarely at the end of that string of hurdles will be a higher hurdle. Beginning in May 1937, each student will sit down, at the end of his senior year, to lengthy departmental examinations. He will be quizzed on all the work he has done in his field, either in courses or independently. It will make no difference how high his course grades may have been. If he fails to pass those examinations, the highest grades in Yale will not get him a degree.

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