Should classification of the UK honours degree have a future?

The classified honours degree has so much prestige and so venerable a tradition that only very serious and systemic changes could justify the question as to whether classification has a future. However, while this paper argues that such changes have indeed taken place in the past 30 years, the main arguments for change are pedagogical. The proposed change is for an unclassified degree, in which details are provided in a profile, covering assessments—only some of which can be classified—in a range of learning activities. A major innovation is the creation by each student of a portfolio, a device well known in art and architecture, which documents their learning. One consequence of this change is that students are treated individually and the traditional concept of fairness, which is based on all students being treated the same, has to be replaced by a more sophisticated concept of fairness. More generally, this change—with its stress on integrating assessment and the process of learning, as opposed to the current attitude where assessment certifies the product of learning—will have to affect not only the processes of assessment, but of all associated teaching and learning. The proposed scheme ought to be helpful also to prospective employers, who would, however, have to change many traditional attitudes.