An A is an A is an A

Northerners call it a "gut," Southerners a "crip," Westerners a "pipe" or "snap" or "Mickey Mouse." By any name, nothing is so beloved by collegians across the land as the course that is almost impossible to fail. No college ever admitted that it had guts; grateful old grads know better. Today, with students brightening and courses tightening, colleges are supposedly more gutless than ever. But are they?

The courses that are really dying (or being given loftier names) are those made infamous by educationists--bait casting, ballroom dancing, bridge playing. The University of Miami has dropped its water-skiing course, and various Texas schools are being pressured to wash out radio listening, horseback riding, art education ("where they teach teachers to paint like children"), and something called "Enriching the Later Years."

Telltale Signs. As alive as ever is another kind of "gut"--the good course taught by a good professor who just happens to be soft on grades and work for reasons that range from fondness for overworked students to earnest boosterism ("We must stimulate interest in Shakespeare"). Such benevolence is subject to whim: sudden crackdowns make one year's gut next year's skull-cracker. Thus, each fall the avid "gut-seeker," as Harvard calls him, has to sniff out anew the telltale signs: heavy class attendance, especially by football players, and a proneness to refer to the course in slang, such as "Spots and Dots" (modern art), "Cops and Robbers" (criminology), "Pots and Pans" (homemaking), "Nuts and Sluts'' (abnormal personality), "Cokes and Smokes" (religion), ''Cowboys and Indians" (history of the West), or "Mint Juleps" (history of the South).

Guts abound in almost any field. Yale's classic was "TB" (Tennyson and Browning), taught by the late William Lyons Phelps, who reportedly never gave anyone less than a B. Harvard's football players have an inexhaustible interest in Slavic folklore; when Slavic 146 was last offered in 1961, the entire team huddled for the first lecture. The University of Texas offers Pharmacy 340 ("Home Emergency Health Problems"), which is better known as "Band-Aids" for the probing depth of its exams: "Name ten items you would expect to find in a family medicine chest."

Generations of gentlemen scholars have lazed through archaeology at the University of North Carolina, where the brilliant J. Penrose Harland has taught more students (up to 658 in a single class) and flunked fewer of them than any other professor in the university's 170 years. Last month six of his students shocked the entire state by cheating on a final exam. The ingrates' defense was that everyone knew that Harland's archaeology class was not a "normal" course, in which a grade had to be earned honestly. Harland was dismayed. "If it was such a crip, why did anyone have to cheat?" he cried.

Six-Hour Tour. Certain fields seem peculiarly prone to guthood--geography, for example. Yale's easy Geography 65 (Political Geography) consists solely of lectures ("the most boring in Yale College"), with not a line of required reading, and if this is too much to bear, Geography 42B ("Maps") offers neither term paper nor final exam. Even Yale cannot match Wayne State University's Geography 652 ("Travel Field Studies"), which awards six credit hours for touring Europe with the professor.

Astronomy is also in among astute gut-seekers. To pass Princeton's Astrophysics 301 is a marvel of objective-exam simplicity: the student who knows an answer is true puts a 3 in the true box, an 0 in the false box. If he isn't sure, he puts a 2 in each box and is assured two points of credit. At the University of Michigan, astronomy is in the venerable hands of Dr. Hazel Losh, a first-rate scholar with a grandmotherly concern for athletes. In her painless introductory course, says one resentful girl, "A is for athletes, B is for boys and P:is for coeds."

At Northwestern University, a "McGoo" is any of five political science courses taught by popular Professor William McGovern, who seems to hate the alphabet beyond the letter C. "We have students who major in this man," says one boy. Equally loved are "appreciation" courses taught by professors who simply aim to "expose" students to their subject. In the booming "opera appreciation" course at the University of Washington, the only chore is to sum up one opera plot. "The teacher feels that if you are interested enough to show up, you are passing the course," says one student. At Harvard, Fine Arts 13 is unofficially called "Darkness at Noon" because it meets then, uses slides, and doesn't tax the student's mind. Yale's arcanely titled "Introduction to Iconography" demands no term paper, but just an afternoon tour around Manhattan museums. Equally easy at Wayne State is "Modern Poetry" taught by Pulitzer Prizewinner W. D. Snodgrass (Heart's Needle), who mostly reads poetry aloud. Real appreciation is the result, says one student, "but there's no final exam, no term paper and no strain."

Upward & Outward. Parroting the jargon is the secret in sociology. "You can write any old thing as long as you mention 'upward mobility' and 'outer-directedness,' " says a Yaleman of Sociology 26A, which almost guarantees a grade of more than 80. And of the reading, says another, "just remember that when a father and son have a fight, it stands for the decline of the American family." Equally alluring is Sociology 69B (Criminology), which until recently required the reading of Rocky Graziano's autobiography, Somebody Up There Likes Me.

Great history professors often teach guts. The modern European history course given by Yale's eminent Hajo Holborn, though currently in abeyance because he is on leave, customarily enrolls some 350 students, who rely on a couple of textbooks, call the course "Page a Day with Hajo Holborn," and don't bother much about lectures. Virtually promised grades of more than 85, they merely await questions that rarely change from year to year. Harvard's famed Crane Brinton freely admits that he "likes undergraduates and doesn't want to make them work too hard." A 30-page paper is required for "Brunch with Brinton," but the good professor advises that "one page of aphorisms will be perfectly acceptable."

The fact that such gems exist even at mighty Harvard is no evidence that college is as easy as ever. On the contrary, the toughness of other courses makes guts all the more precious. When pressed, some Harvard gut-seekers concede feelings of "intellectual dishonesty." But most agree with one student on the dean's list: "For getting into graduate school or making the dean's list, an A is an A no matter what course you get it in."

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