University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades to Ease Student Stress
University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades To'Curb Mental Health Crisis'
The University of Michigan is eliminating letter grades for first-semester students starting this fall, replacing them with a pass/fail system. The move aims to reduce academic pressure and support student mental health, following similar changes at other universities. Critics worry it may affect graduate school admissions and student motivation.
We want to send a clear message that we care about the whole student, not just their GPA.
- rahimnathwani
I grew up in the UK. When I started working full time, I had three academic things on my CV:
- 11 GCSE grades
- 4 A level grades
- 1 University degree
For virtually all of these, the grades/results were determined by exams taken at the end of a period of study:
- GCSE exams taken at ~16yo
- A level exams taken at ~18yo
- University finals taken at ~21yo
At the time, I thought it was very very strange that my GCSE grades for English Language and English Literature were not based on exams, but on a bunch of essays I had written over a two year period.
It seemed strange because those past essays did not measure my current capability, but something else.
But this (measuring students on performance over multiple years) is the norm here in the US. Sure, many students take the SAT or ACT or various AP exams. But many students enter university with their academic performance measured on their high school GPA, which seemingly doesn't even attempt to measure mastery.
- ungreased0675
The University of Michigan has around a 15% acceptance rate. How is it possible that they’re letting in kids who aren’t ready to do college level work? What are they selecting for?
- technothrasher
Back when I went to University of Rochester in the early 90's, the entire first year was not included in your GPA. So we still got grades, but they didn't count for anything. But in my junior year, the state of NY told the school that they would lose their accreditation if they kept it up, because they saw it as unfairly raising the GPA of UR graduates versus all other NY universities. So while my class was grandfathered in, the practice was stopped the next year for the incoming freshman class.
- joezydeco
When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, you can expect that they are going to throttle back once they're away from home with way more free time than is normal.
From my kid's experience: she was up at 6:30am, in AP classes by 7:30am (three more to go during the day). Classes were done by 3:00, then sports practice until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces. Then homework after dinner until 10:00 or so, sometimes much later. Homework assigned over weekends. Homework assigned over breaks.
That's 15+ hours a day, every weekday, for an entire school year. Then you have test prep (APs and the ACT/SAT), college applications, writing essays and scholarship applications, college tours, sorting decisions, financial aid applications, etc etc etc. And now her college already has a few hours of orientation videos stacked up for her to watch before she moves in.
Personally, I don't blame her if she checks out for a few weeks. Or a semester.
- dividefuel
Thinking more about this, I feel a good solution might be to let students decide whether they want to keep the first semester letter grades once they receive them, or simplify them down to a pass/no-pass.
That way there's still an incentive to do good work, and students who do well still get to receive the benefit of keeping the letter grade. Students who do poorly receive the letter grade as feedback, but have a one-off chance to reduce the impact and try again the next semester.
- culi
Given that 75% of all grades in 2022 were A's, grade inflation has already made the indicator value of grades pretty meaningless. I think this take from a student captures it well:
> Louth, 20 years old, said he earned all A’s and one B in his first semester and doubted he would have worked as hard had the classes been pass/fail. But he thinks he would have learned more from his classes without the pressure of earning high marks.
The first semester should help students explore and engage their curiosity. I think it's a good move and hope the experiment succeeds
- markus_zhang
I don't know. Why are they lowering the standards again? Maybe they should raise the standard of high schools instead?
Or maybe they can help them by giving access to mental health practitioners, or maybe set some mandatory sessions to help them for the transition.
Anyway I think dropping first semester grades is a huge band-aid that they should never use. If we keep lowering the standards, maybe the whole education system is failing our children.
- c7b
Fwiw, afaik in most Oxford and Cambridge degrees the only exams that count towards your grade are in the final year or the final two years. Everything before that is basically preparation, and the colleges doing weekly supervision and regular mock exams to keep tabs who is on track to pass and who needs extra attention. I've never heard there was a problem with a lack of rigor or recognition for the degrees awarded there. So U of Michigan taking a small step in that direction shouldn't be the end of the world either.
- storus
Soon the whole US academia reputation will go down the drain and the degrees we all worked so hard for will have no meaning. How to shoot oneself in the foot 101.
- AngryData
It sounds okay at first glance, but how many people are going to get saddled with an extra semester of debt now because they didn't figure out they weren't suite/ready for college yet but were just passed along through the first semester anyways?