Posted on 09/23/2026 12:44:42 PM PDT by karpov
The University of Michigan plans to exclude first-semester letter grades from students’ transcripts to “curb the mental health crisis.” What would seem like a mundane university-level grading change has become a cultural touchpoint. Early-morning talk shows, national to local outlets—everyone seems to have a reaction.
The grading policy is expected to go into effect in fall 2027 in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the largest school at the university. Freshmen will still know what grades they received internally, but those grades won’t count toward their overall GPA. Everyone will be required to receive pass/no credit because “covering an individual’s grades will inadvertently become equated with them not doing well in a class.”
Although covered grading appeals to a very real concern about the difficult transition year, it is a risky policy with an unremarkable track record.
Covered, or shadow, grading is when colleges share freshmen’s letter grades with students internally but exclude them from transcripts. The rationale for this kind of policy has historically been to ease the stress that high-achieving students place on themselves when attending unusually rigorous schools.
Michigan would join a small club of universities that have this unusual policy. Other prominent universities include MIT, Caltech, and Wellesley. Schools that adopted these policies mostly did so in the 1960s and 1970s, with Caltech and MIT as early adopters. Caltech faculty hoped that students would learn to “substitute more mature and substantial motives for work than the threat of a low GPA or the status of a high one.”
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Is this retroactive? Will my C in Calculus 1 will be expunged from my Michigan record?
Michigan, one of the great Big 10 universities, has just degraded itself. Freshman year, with the need to make grades, is a great winnowing experience that forces sheltered children to become young adults. I know; I went through that experience in 1961 (yes, 1961) at another Big 10 school.
OTOH, if they decided to follow UM's lead this way, it would be the last term I taught for them.
They continue to “dumb down” education.
Before long they won’t require anything at all of the students. Just write a huge check and they will hand you a diploma!
The ‘mental health crisis’ is in the collective minds of the freaks who run these universities.
An increasing number of universities are making college entrance exams optional, willing to substitute other subjective criteria in its place, such as “lived experience.” Michigan’s newest suggestion of excluding initial grades from student records is just a logical progression of this. Unfortunately, it will get a LOT worse.
I agree with you that this marks a radical degradation of a school’s academic rigor, but the trend isn’t their friend. They either bow to the new low, across-the-board standards or find themselves shriveling out of existence. It becomes a survival game. I hate it, but that’s what it’s become.
They certainly don’t know how to count time there.
MIT was an early adopter of abolishing first-semester letter grades. However, it is still a “firehose” of tough courses and grading!
When I went to MIT, it was before the abolition of first-semester letter grades. Back then, the first two semesters of Physics were based on Newtonian mechanics. I received a D in first-term Physics. When the second term began, the professor warned all who had gotten Ds that we were in trouble.
However, during the second term, I finally “got” calculus-based Newtonian mechanics. And I surprisingly got a B in Physics that term! Never again did I get any grade lower than a C in any course, nor did I miss being on the honor roll for any term.
Nowadays, not only has MIT abolished first-semester letter grades, but they offer a slower version of calculus-based Newtonian Physics that extends from the first term into what is normally the independent activities period. This is especially designed for those with a not-so-good high school Physics background, such as I had.
Passing first year Physics is required to graduate from MIT, so this “extended” Physics course is designed to help some students do so.
Now the University of Michigan abolishing first-semester letter grades. They are not MIT, so their reason for doing this is probably different.
ΣF=MA bump.
“The University of Michigan plans to exclude first-semester letter grades from students’ transcripts to “curb the mental health crisis.””
how soon will this morph into no grades for anyone ever?
inadvertently??? Ya think???
Can’t they just extend the exam times by a second to give those who failed a second chance?
One of my nieces graduated from Baker.
Gosh, I don’t know if this goes far enough. I mean, even going to classes is terribly stressful. How about if students just give the university money, and the university just issues the diploma right then? Why spend 4 years being tortured with these schedules and classes and assignments? Just take the $75K, and hand out the diploma...
Sorry. As so many teenage and high school life movies have told us again and again, all these things are on our permanent high school record.
Has anyone ever had someone ask to see our permanent high school record? Hope St. Peter won’t. I actually was a very good boy, though. Never had any fun the whole time.
p
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.