Tim Tai, Staff Photographer

As Yale nears three decades since the establishment of Credit/D/Fail, students are still seeking changes to the policy.

The policy was altered in 1996, 2004, 2018 and 2021 — most recently to delay the deadline by which students may convert a course to Credit/D/Fail. But deadlines, distributional requirements and which majors offer credit all continue to be points of contention between the YCC and administrators. Today, the YCC meets with administrators to advocate for the policy’s expansion as it approaches its 30th anniversary next year. 

“I think that academic stress is everywhere,” Leleda Beraki ’24, YCC deputy academic life policy director, told the News. “Yale owes it to its students and the burden of proof is on them to show us that we’re here to actually learn and not to be tested consistently.”

Beraki raised several questions about the current Credit/D/Fail policy. Speaking from her own perspective, rather than that of the YCC, she said she has concerns that the current system penalizes students for exploring new subjects. She also questioned the fact that some majors offer major credit for the Credit/D/Fail option, while others don’t, alongside the fact that students usually cannot see their grades before making a decision. 

Beraki said that the YCC has been trying to get the administration to respond to these questions. 

“But of course we do get administrative pushback, […] so it’s been a long term project,” Beraki clarified.

Administrators have adopted short-term reforms, like when Yale College adopted a Universal Pass/Fail system in April 2020. And this January, the University expanded the policy to allow students to retroactively convert courses that had exams taken during the hectic final days of the fall semester exam period. However, some students wish to see more permanent changes.

“If we’re being honest about where the majority of stress lies, it’s right around the end of the course, so making students choose before the end of the course doesn’t make much sense to me,” Allie Dettelbach ’25 told the News. “This would be a good time for the administration to show that they listen to and reflect student interest.”

While Dettelbach noted that the current Credit/D/Fail policy may encourage academic experimentation, she said that she is not sure if it truly incentivizes students to take harder classes. She said a retroactive Credit/D/Fail option may alleviate these problems.

In December, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun expressed interest in reforming the policy in several key areas. 

“I rely on the YCC to organize student ideas and needs,” Chun wrote in a February email to the News. “The faculty and I value their reports and proposals, especially when they include data from student surveys, historical reviews, and peer institution comparisons. My work as dean is shaped by students and faculty.”

This was not the first time that the Dean of Yale College has expressed interest in reforming Credit/D/Fail. In 2007, the YCC was met with pushback from administrators when they proposed an extension to the Credit/D/Fail deadline until after exams, which was a surprise to some YCC members who had worked with then Dean of Yale College Peter Salovey to extend the deadline. He told them to revisit the policy the following fall. Fifteen years later, the Spring 2022 deadline to convert a grade is on April 29, a week before the start of exams.

Chun told the News that the Yale College Committee on Teaching and Learning is reviewing shifting the Credit/D/Fail deadline to the end of the semester so students see their grade before making a decision. 

Some students, such as Beraki, also wish to see more opportunities for Credit/D/Fail classes to count toward Yale’s distributional requirement. But Chun pointed to an ongoing debate over the level of effort that students would exert if distributional classes counted for credit. 

A Spring 2016 report from the YCC claimed that Credit/D/Fail was not promoting exploration within or outside of one’s major. While students have since been allowed to take more classes for credit, the distributional requirement policy has remained the same.

The Yale College Council Senate is composed of two senators from each residential college.