I've had courses that allow your grade on the final to replace your overall grade, if it ends up being higher. This sounds like a fair compromise to me, if you

I've had courses that allow your grade on the final to replace your overall grade, if it ends up being higher. This sounds like a fair compromise to me, if you know the material by the end of the course, then you've earned a good grade, regardless of how long it took you to get there. At least in my experience, if the teacher wasn't grading at all the students would quickly pick up on it. It's easier to write a C paper than an A paper, and we would definitely have taken advantage of this. This was in a STEM major though where the majority of us are just looking to get the piece of paper that we can exchange for a 100k+ a year job, and not really looking to learn.