Partial credits set a dangerous precedent

In response to The Chronicle's recent editorial calling for partial credits for lab courses, the Duke Student Government Academic Affairs Committee believes that these proposals threaten to establish a dangerous precedent. Defining courses solely by the amount of in-class time spent by the student creates a slippery slope for any class that meets more than the typical two-and-a-half hours per week. Numerous classes in a myriad of departments fall into this category. Most Duke students have even taken such classes, including those omnipresent intro language classes which meet five days a week. Should every student at Duke who takes these courses get extra credits as well? In all fairness, where would this line be drawn?

While the editorial additionally suggests that its proposals would ease the burdens of students taking lab courses, this argument is largely unfounded. Students seldom have difficulty earning thirty-four course credits between their curricular and major requirements, so "relief" from the system would seem unnecessary. Similarly, departments would never lower their standards for the completion of their major. Such changes, therefore, would be rendered essentially useless.

A final objection we have is that the humanities and the social sciences have their lab class equivalents: English seminars that read a novel a week, history classes that pour over volumes of primary source documents, and political science courses that produce forty or fifty-page papers. Such classes--found in every department across campus--are among the most work intensive courses at this University. The bulk of the work they entail, however, does not occur in a lab on Science Drive but rather amidst the stacks of Perkins or behind a laptop in the Gothic Reading Room. These courses are as academically rigorous as any lab course at Duke, yet few would argue that they deserve special treatment for requiring students to go the extra mile.

Unless Duke chooses to make a complete shift to a comprehensive credit-hours system, we believe that no course should be counted any differently from all the rest.

Avery Reaves
The author is Duke Student Government Vice President of Academic Affairs