At the University of Michigan, first-semester failure will no longer follow new students onto their transcripts.
The university’s liberal arts college says it will conceal grades for incoming freshmen during their first term, keeping them off official transcripts as part of an effort to “curb the mental health crisis” affecting college students.
Beginning this fall, the public research university’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will evaluate first-semester freshmen on a pass/no credit basis rather than assigning traditional letter grades on the transcript, the school announced in a statement.
Officials at LSA, the largest of the University of Michigan’s 19 colleges, said students will still be able to see their actual grades and will continue receiving feedback from instructors. Those grades, however, will not count toward their GPAs.
Instead, transcripts will note that all first-semester courses were automatically graded as pass/no credit.
The underlying grades will still be kept internally for purposes such as academic awards, scholarships, internships, academic advising, professional opportunities and transfers into majors outside LSA. Students in the college will begin having grades appear on their transcripts and count toward their GPAs starting in their second semester, the college said.
“Helping all students establish early momentum has been recognized as the most important element in U-M’s campus-wide Student Success Initiative,” the college wrote.
“We believe that covering grades will help students start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.”
The LSA college, which has nearly 20,000 students, claimed this program will support students’ well-being and foster collaboration instead of competition.
Similar programs have also been adopted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, Swarthmore College and Wellesley College.
Experts warned the policy just coddles students.
“We’ve gotten to the point where normal stress is being treated like a mental health problem. Getting a bad grade is disappointing. It can be embarrassing. It can make you anxious. But that doesn’t make it psychologically harmful,” Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, the author of “Therapy Nation,” told The Post.
“College should prepare students for adulthood. Your boss isn’t going to hide a bad performance review because it might make you anxious. Life doesn’t come with grade covering. At some point, young people have to learn that feeling bad is not the same thing as being harmed.”
The LSA college did not immediately return a request for comment.
