A fascinating story. Wonder if it’s true or just another urban legend?
While I don’t want to promote socialism or argue against the lesson of the story, I would think that in a college class, some of the students would start to take leadership roles and would put peer pressure on all to study. For instance, I could see the students who want better grades to start a study group that everyone would be pressured to attend. For them all to just give up seems highly unlikely unless the overwhelming majority of them were unmotivated towards their grade.
My biggest suspicion about why this story isn’t true is that generally it takes years for socialism to fall apart, not a matter of a single semester’s time. And how convenient that the professor got a whole class who at the beginning of the class was full of socialists and everyone agreed to this scheme. (Personally I would have gone to the dean right away)
So, I doubt it’s true, but a fun story none the less.
