The procedures seemed heretical six years ago. Campus radicals in California expanded their teach-ins into the "Free University of Berkeley," where students abolished course requirements and grades and designed their own "relevant" curriculum. Still in business, the Free University has been copied in some 40 other locations. Moreover, the emphasis on students' taking responsibility for their own education is influencing established campuses. Relaxed grade and course requirements are now optional at several hundred institutions, allowing unprecedented flexibility. The question is whether, in the process, higher education is lowering its standards.
Reformers contend that the new alternatives eliminate the coercion that often blocks...
