On many a college campus, a C is still a fashionable grade for a bright young man whose pursuit of fun often overrules his search for knowledge. But not any longer at Massachusetts’ Amherst College. There “gentleman C” and even B students whose performances do not measure up to their abilities have a new name: underachievers. With the title is awarded a mandatory one-year leave of absence from the college. Last week, in his annual report, Amherst President Charles W. Cole said that the college’s program to unload loafers had fared well during its first experimental year and will be continued.
Picking from faculty suggestions of shirker sophomores and juniors, Amherst Dean C. Scott Porter classified 51 students as potential underachievers. After a careful screening of the students’ records, and conferences with them and their parents, five juniors and seven sophomores were told to take a year’s leave. Of the twelve who failed to fulfill their potential, one had a B average, the others had C or below. All may return next fall, with what Amherst hopes will be “added maturity and perspective.”
Underlying Amherst’s plan to make its students fulfill their promise, said President Cole, is the basic problem of higher education’s becoming “an increasingly scarce commodity.” With 50% more freshmen seeking admission by 1965, he explained, “colleges will be more and more careful not to permit a student to remain unless he is working at some level close to his top capacity.” Predicted Cole: “The underachiever program may be considered the foreshadowing of things to come, an experiment that in one form or another will be widely tried.”
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Donald Trump Is TIME's 2024 Person of the Year
- TIME’s Top 10 Photos of 2024
- Why Gen Z Is Drinking Less
- The Best Movies About Cooking
- Why Is Anxiety Worse at Night?
- A Head-to-Toe Guide to Treating Dry Skin
- Why Street Cats Are Taking Over Urban Neighborhoods
- Column: Jimmy Carter’s Global Legacy Was Moral Clarity
Contact us at letters@time.com