University of Michigan changes grade policy for some freshmen
Thousands of freshman students at the University of Michigan will not see letter grades on their report cards next fall.
The school recently announced it is starting a "grade covering" pilot program in 2027 for all incoming first-year students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, for their first semester, where students will only receive pass (P) or no credit (NC) grades instead of A through F letter grades.
Instructors and professors would still assign letter grades for students to know, but students' final GPAs and final transcripts for the first semester would not reflect them.
The school's college, which enrolls about 3,500 first-year students across over 80 majors, said the grade-covering program would benefit students' mental health.
"We believe that covering grades will help students start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals," the school explained, adding that the change will help "foster an environment where college students can acclimate to the demands of a University of Michigan education and pursue new academic challenges."
The policy change will not apply to other first-year students in the university's other 18 colleges, such as the business or engineering schools.
Derek Peterson, a professor of history and African Studies and former chair of the university's Faculty Senate, told ABC News he welcomes the new grade policy change for LSA freshmen, some of whom he will be teaching in the fall.
"Mental health is a real problem for undergraduates here in Michigan, as it is across higher education," Peterson said. "Whatever we can do in terms of policy to enable our students to thrive in a difficult and challenging world that bears on their mental health profoundly, I think that's very much the right thing for us to do."
Peterson pointed out that many undergraduate freshmen are navigating new and transitional periods in their young lives, including balancing jobs, moving away from home and societal and familial pressures and the grade policy will enable them to experiment with new classes without the major consequences behind a class failure.
"First-year students are in a particularly precarious position," Peterson said. "The right response is to be charitable, to find ways to work with what our students do know how to do, to give them the space they need to figure it out, so that even if they aren't as well prepared, they can get up to speed in their first year and succeed thereafter."
The University of Michigan declined to comment further on the new policy to ABC News.
The school is not the first higher education institution to implement a grade covering policy. Other schools such as the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Swarthmore College and Wellesley College already have grade covering policies in place for first-year students.
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