Should professors eliminate deadlines?

Image:  When Hannah Snyder, assistant professor of psychology at Brandeis University, first began teaching, she did not set multiple midsemester deadlines for students to report progress on their end-of-semester papers. As the weeks passed, she offered her students gentle reminders to begin early and pace themselves, given the approaching course end. But many students nonetheless procrastinated. As the final deadline drew close, many scrambled in a stressful, last-minute burst of work that...