When hurricane Sandy tore through Long Island, it wrecked havoc on thousands of towns along the Atlantic coast, causing lives to be disrupted and thrown into states of confusion and frustration. One such ramification of the monstrous storm was a newly confused educational systems at colleges and universities. As students scrambled to salvage what remained of their lives, their educations were disrupted, and a huge gap was left in the standard structure of the fall semester. .
An example of this educational disruption, was illustrated at Hofstra University in Hempstead on Long Island, NY. The school's board of directors determined that, due to the hurricane's devastation, it would be best to allow the students to decide whether or not they wanted to use the pass/fail system for their current classes. For a Pass/Fail grading system showed anything over a 70% as a passing grade and anything under 70% was considered to be a failing grade. The hurricane made a lot of people think again about the option of installing Pass/Fail for everyone's first year in college in general, even though that topic has been discussed a lot before. By looking back at my own and my friends' experiences with Pass/Fail last year, I don't think it would have a positive impact on students education.
First of all it's important to take into account that enrolling at a university and often living away from home for the first time in life is a huge challenge for basically every student. Therefore it would definitely help if universities take away the grading pressure during freshman year. Students would be able to settle in without being under permanent pressure and could concentrate on getting used to the lectures and organizing their life as a student. A statistic that supports the point I just made is a recent study showing that the pressure freshmen students feel in college has reached a new high. .
That means that especially sensitive students would benefit from a Pass/Fail grading policy.