Your professor is teaching a class on higher education policy. Write a post responding to the professor's question. Express and support your opinion and contribute to the discussion in your own words. An effective response has at least 100 words.
Dr. Helena Brandt
Several universities are considering whether marks from the first year should count towards the final degree classification, instead of the first year being simply pass or fail. Which arrangement is better, and why?
Ines
Count them. A year that does not count is a year that students are told does not matter, and they behave accordingly. The habits formed in that year are the ones they take into the second, and nobody acquires the habit of working steadily by being told for twelve months that nothing is at stake.
Theo
Ines is describing a real problem and proposing the wrong cure. The first year is when students arrive from very different schools, and a mark in November measures the school far more than the student. Making that mark permanent freezes an inequality that the year exists to correct.