A few days back, the University of Michigan board of trustees (or regents, or whatever they call themselves) voted to change the grading policy for students enrolled in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, i.e. your basic liberal-arts track. For the first semester of freshman year, students will only earn pass/fail grades.
In this, the university joins many others at the elite level, where students are eased into college life this way. The stated reason was “mental health,” however, which gave millions of Walmart Wolverines a reason to rise as one and shout KIDS THESE DAYS THEY’RE ALL WORTHLESS AND WEAK:
Under the plan, first semester letter grades will still be recorded internally by the school for things like compliance reporting and eligibility for academic honors, the university said. Student transcripts, however, will reflect either “pass” for each course or “no credit.” First-semester grades will not factor into grade-point averages.
And:
The University of Michigan said the point of the change “is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college,” and to allow students to set their early academic path with less grade pressure. “For example, they can explore a subject that may not come easily to them or take a course in a new field without the fear that a low grade may have long-term consequences,” the school said in its statement.
I dunno about you, but I don’t find this alarming. Anyone who’s been on a college campus lately knows the pressure for GPAs is intense, for grad school admissions or internship opportunities. In fact, sometimes it seems the goal is simply to graduate with the credential with a suitably impressive GPA, then head straight to Wall Street. The whole purpose of college is, or used to be, to open your mind, learn how to think. If you’re worried about how it might affect your law-school admission, you might not take a dive into a philosophy or creative writing class. One semester is 12.5 percent of your undergrad years, assuming you finish in the usual four. Big deal.
There’s also the problem of the freshman year breakdown, very common in young people at risk of serious mental illness. You pack your kid off in August or September, and they come home for Christmas with bipolar disease or schizophrenia, both triggered in part by stress. I’m not for a minute saying those will be avoided with pass/fail grading, but maybe it can help, a little.
But conservatives, always looking for the next SQUIRREL to distract from Iran/gas prices/grocery prices and everything else, have pounced. This is cheapening my University of Michigan degree is a common complaint, doubtless from people who don’t hold one. How are these kids ever going to learn the hard truth about the world is another. Meanwhile, at that famous cupcake school, MIT:
The new grading plan, reported earlier by The Chronicle of Higher Education, is similar to how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology records grades. First-semester freshman grades at M.I.T. are reported as either pass or no record, to allow students time to get accustomed to an increased college workload and different teaching methods, the M.I.T. Registrar’s Office explains on its website.
Oh, why even waste time thinking about this shit. The world runs on outrage. Let’s opt out for a while.
How was your weekend? I had: A birthday party, suffocating humidity, Eastern Market, not enough sleep. And tomorrow it all starts again.
The birthday party ended on a high note: The Fourth of July fireworks, rescheduled because of storms over the holiday weekend, went off at 10, and we could see them from the street outside. It was perfect. Then the old people went home because we’re old, and the young ones went to the next party, because they can do that. It was a good night.
Let’s have a good week.
Jeff Gill said on August 16, 2026 at 9:37 pm
There’s quite a discussion going on right now, about what college is. Or is for. I do not have the answer.
We may not yet know what a high school graduation is for.
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alex said on August 16, 2026 at 9:52 pm
I had a nervous breakdown (what they called it back then) in my freshman year. It wasn’t exacerbated by fear of shitty grades so much as adjusting to civilian life after confinement in a military school, drugs and sex galore in the offing to a swan who still thought of himself as an ugly duckling, and a likely case of undiagnosed PTSD, which probably hadn’t even been conceived yet as a diagnosis. And, of course, being gay in a world that shunned it.
Frankly, it’s a wonder I managed to get through college, and today I reflect on just how little of it I actually absorbed while being distracted by the exigencies of distress.
People enter college under all kinds of duress, and much of it is parental pressure to succeed if not excel. Frankly, I favor the idea of letting kids have a year or two or even more if necessary to figure out what it is that they really want to do with their lives. I’m fucking retired and I still don’t know.
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Colleen said on August 16, 2026 at 9:59 pm
My first semester of college I was so homesick I didn’t eat for the first two weeks. I also made my lowest grades of the four years that semester. Taking courses P/F would definitely have helped my final GPA.
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Mark P said on August 16, 2026 at 10:01 pm
If we were all the pampered and privileged children of the elite, university would prepare us for sparkling conversations at cocktail parties. If we were the hungry, first generation college students, children of the WW2 vets, university would prepare us for a solid, upwardly-mobile career. Today, who knows? Job hopping at fast food and coffee shops for the literature majors? Masters of the universe for finance majors? Nurses, insurance sales people? Scientists? Engineers? All I think I know is that you end up making more money with a college degree than without. On average. So it’s not really about a general education, it’s about preparing to become a productive member of society. Not to say a cog, but, well …
It seems to me a very American idea.
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Deborah said on August 16, 2026 at 11:48 pm
looking back on it now, I was so not ready to be on my own in college my freshman year. I went to the same school as my sister a grade ahead of me. I basically only went there because she did and it was the only college my dad would pay for. I had no idea how to even be able to think about how I could put myself through art school, which I really wanted to do. I got no mentoring in any of that. There are probably millions of kids out there who haven’t a clue to how to pursue what they want to get out of an education. Sure a small demographic has that under control but not in the general population.
They had pass/fail courses when I was at my small Lutheran college many moons ago, but as I recall it was a class by class decision. It was mostly electives, classes that you could take for your own curiosity or interest, not required for your major. I took a psychology coarse pass/fail, I don’t remember if I had any others. There were lots of others though.
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Deborah said on August 17, 2026 at 12:01 am
Being a sparkling conversationalist was never a skill of mine as much as I ever wished that, and a dancer. I always thought it was unfair that an introvert who had some creative and artistic skills didn’t have an outlet for that at parties. I don’t want to be boring socially, but I just am. I am also woefully dancing impaired, always have been but I love to watch really good dancers.
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Brandon said on August 17, 2026 at 1:15 am
Speaking of birthdays, today (the 16th) is Madonna’s 68th.
—
As for Lala, it could have been far worse.
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Gretchen said on August 17, 2026 at 3:16 am
I know I took some pass/fail classes at Michigan in the early 70s. Not many, and I don’t remember the rules governing the choice, but it happened at least once in awhile 50 years ago.
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David C said on August 17, 2026 at 6:04 am
I washed out on my first try at college. It was pass/fail and it didn’t help me. I lasted a semester. Introvert me went from my small high school where I was with kids I’d known since kindergarten to a college where I knew nobody. God, I felt so alone, yet there were people all around. I should have gone to community college, but at that time, it was looked down on. After a couple of years working, I enrolled at Grand Rapids Community College and thrived.
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ROGirl said on August 17, 2026 at 7:55 am
I was in the Residential College in AA, a small oasis in the leviathan LSA. Classrooms were in the dorm, East Quad (former Engineering dorm, where Ted Kaczynski once lived). RC classes were pass/fail, with the option of asking for a letter grade. Fran and Jens Zorn taught in the RC, and I had Fran for freshman English. I ended up taking more classes in LSA, but the RC was a good entry portal into the big campus machine.
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Deborah said on August 17, 2026 at 9:17 am
ROGirl, what is AA (Ann Arbor?), LSA and RC?
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ROGirl said on August 17, 2026 at 9:32 am
Ann Arbor (not Alcoholics Anonymous), College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Residential College (see above — not Roman Catholic).
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ROGirl said on August 17, 2026 at 9:56 am
Back when people wrote letters and used snail mail, you would write A² as the return address on the envelope.
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Jeff Gill said on August 17, 2026 at 10:21 am
I’ve been campaigning for five years in the program I teach for to make it pass/fail; these are credentialing courses which are eight weeks, semi-asynchronous online with no academic credit, so there’s no reason to end with a grade, per se, though I’m happy to grade each week to let students know how they’re doing (basically a 10 points per week max, less if you don’t post or say anything that relates to the prompt or readings or lecture). Yet we are forced to create a template for points that results in a final grade on the classic scale (A+, A, A-, B+, B, etc.). Faculty meeting after faculty meeting we go at this; I’ve told the director of the program (my dean, effectively) that I’m basically doing it pass/fail, and she approves, but it still has to be marked on the official scale — so I’m “part of the problem,” giving mostly A+ & As or Fs.
The prison of received wisdom has high walls and tight bars.
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Julie Robinson said on August 17, 2026 at 5:12 pm
Wow, a huge number of us have had similar experiences at college. I was also an introvert from a small town who never learned to make friends because I was surrounded by my music and theater cohort in high school. I struggled at huge Indiana University, with that and having to learn how to study, hating the classes in my major, hometown boyfriend breaking up with me, and then my cat died.
I was saved by the other women in my singing group, since we met for two hours a day and traveled for performances. But I did spend a semester at home before realizing there weren’t any jobs back home and from then on had a much happier experience.
We didn’t think our son was ready and urged a gap year, but he didn’t agree, and it was a disaster. He had a major breakdown and flunked most of his classes. I didn’t care so much about that but it was heartbreaking to witness his despair. We considered withdrawing him in the middle of the second semester.
Long story short, he was diagnosed as bipolar II, started on meds, and enrolled at the local school. He never finished and I often wonder if he would have with a better start. He eventually learned to control his symptoms with diet and exercise, and after many tries found a job that’s a great fit, and also a marvelous woman to share his life. But still, I always have a bit of worry in my heart.
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Brandon said on August 17, 2026 at 6:38 pm
When I said Lala could have been far worse, people could have died. There were no fatalities, and no one was reported missing, but Lala caused extensive damage in Kau.
https://bigislandnow.com/2026/08/16/hurricane-lala-devastates-kau-district-damaged-bridges-block-access-to-communities/
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Jeff Gill said on August 17, 2026 at 7:45 pm
The footage from your neighborhood, Brandon, is horrible… and weirdly similar to what I’m seeing to my immediate west in Carmel & northside Indy. I’ve walked across the Hazel Dell bridge a number of times.
Here’s a story problem for you: “Once the quarry, which can hold 9 billion gallons of water, fills, water [will] begin flowing into the normal path of the river again. Pease said he expects the quarry would fill with water within six hours if the White River reroutes into it.”
https://youarecurrent.com/2026/08/17/white-river-may-be-fully-diverted-into-carmel-quarry/
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Suzanne said on August 17, 2026 at 8:01 pm
I went from an approx 1000 student parochial high school to IU Bloomington, having no clue what I wanted to study. It was a huge adjustment. I wasn’t wild about dorm life but after a few weeks of being homesick, I did ok. I loved being taught by experts and the world opened up. Have I had a hugely success career? No, but I would not trade the experience for anything. I went to my first opera at IU, first time encountering Handel’s Messiah, ate my first bagel with cream cheese, learned to adult, saw a Monet painting in real life, found out what “The Region” is in Indiana, and met people from all over the world. I didn’t have trouble going to class. I enjoyed my classes, wasn’t a party person, and blowing off class wasn’t going to happen because I was funding my own education. Regrets are that I was a good church going young woman and spent too much time doing church related things rather than exploring the big world out there!
I also know that if all my classes had been pass/fail freshman year, I probably wouldn’t have learned as much because I wouldn’t have tried very hard.
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