Starting fall 2027, the University of Michigan's largest college will stop putting first-semester grades on freshman transcripts. Students will still earn letter grades, and instructors will still hand out feedback, but externally every course will show up as "pass" or "no credit." The stated reason: To "curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals."

I get the intent, I really do, but this fix is pathetically performative. And I write this reluctantly, I'm a Michigan resident, U of M is world-class institution and rightfully a source of real local pride, I've even got family who graduated from there. I really am not looking for a target to take gratuitous shots at, but ... seriously?

If there's a mental health crisis among incoming freshmen, address the actual mental health crisis! Give them counseling resources, build in a real transition period, teach coping skills, foster resilience, staff up student services. Hiding the grade doesn't touch any of that. It just makes the grade invisible while leaving the stress that produced it fully intact.

But more importantly, figure out what's actually fueling the crisis! These are the same institutions, the same intro courses, the same exams that freshmen have been taking for decades. So why are today's students struggling more than the ones who sat in those same lecture halls twenty or thirty years ago? What changed? Hiding the grade treats the symptom and skips the diagnosis entirely, and without the diagnosis, we're just ignoring the cure, kicking the can down the road.

And here's the part that really bugs me. If a first-semester grade doesn't matter enough to show up on a transcript, doesn't count toward GPA, doesn't affect financial aid or honors in any external way, then why are we assessing it in the first place? This is the same problem with grading policy generally that I keep coming back to, we continue to measure the wrong thing, and then when the measurement turns out not to matter, the answer is to paper over the measurement instead of asking what we should have been measuring, and why.

And that's the thing, rethinking what we assess isn't the same as assessing nothing. But if simply take away the grade entirely then you take away a big part of the reason to push through the hard stuff. Why grind through, why differentiate yourself, why put in the extra hour, if the outcome literally will not follow you anywhere? Some students will use that freedom to explore and take risks, sure. Plenty of others will just coast, because coasting now carries zero cost.

Michigan isn't inventing this idea, MIT and Caltech do versions of it too. But precedent isn't the same as evidence it works. Johns Hopkins tried a grade-covering policy and walked it back.

If the goal is genuinely student well-being, treat the well-being problem directly. Don't just hide the scoreboard.