Publisher’s Note: There is a cautionary tale at the University of Michigan that can be useful if you have children attending AU, Augusta Tech, USC Aiken, or many other colleges and universities in the region. It’d be easy to snipe at them for their hiring and firing of football coach Sherrone Moore, due to his indiscretions with an assistant. That, however, was a “one-off.”
No, there is a deeper issue affecting students that Dr. Rick Franza tackles today involving grades and their future prospects.
UM took a step backward last week in its pursuit of academic rigor and development of “the leaders and best” when it announced that it will drop grades for first-semester freshmen next year (Fall Semester 2027) in an effort to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.” Instead of a letter grade, first-semester transcripts will show “pass or no credit.” This new policy is being implemented to help students “acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivation to guide personally meaningful academic journey,” UM said. I am sorry, but I am not buying this, and I believe it undermines its goal of “curbing the mental health crisis” and stunts the development and maturity of young people.
As an aside, unfortunately, this policy is a natural follow-on to rampant grade inflation that is occurring on our nation’s campuses and will have a similar impact (See my columns from November 2025 and May 2026 for details on grade inflation and its impact. UM is another “poster child” for grade inflation. In 2012, 58% of the grades at UM were either A+, A, or A-, while in 2024, that number rose to 74%. It is probably even higher today, which makes me wonder why grades need to be hidden in the first place.
A personal story might provide good insight as to why I think UM’s policy is counterproductive. Forty-nine years ago this week, I started my freshman year at the University of Notre Dame. I came to Notre Dame having gotten a large percentage of A’s in high school without too much effort. As long as I went to class, paid attention, and did my homework, I really did not have to study too much. College was a different story, and Notre Dame let us freshmen (and our parents) know early. We received reports in the middle of our first semester (it was done in the second semester as well) with what grades we would have had if the semester had ended then. I was not doing very well, with a grade point average (GPA) of about 2.2. This was an important signal to me, which motivated me to work harder, be more committed to my academics, and be more resilient in the face of adversity- the opposite of a mental health issue. By the end of the semester, I raised my GPA to 2.75, and I continued to improve through my academic career, in large part due to the lesson learned that first semester. If the new UM policy was in place at Notre Dame, I doubt my trajectory would have been the same.
I have two major problems with the new UM policy. First and foremost, UM’s primary motivation is its attempt to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.” Unfortunately, all this policy does is “kick the can further down the road.” As young people are shielded from adversity longer and longer, when they finally have to deal with it, they are not capable of doing so. My daughters tell me that one of the things they value most is that they were allowed to fail when they were young and the “stakes were low.” They say that helped them learn how to deal with failure and adversity. College students need to learn that college is hard and should be challenging. Our job as educators is to help them find ways to rise to the challenge, not shield them from it.
In addition, we have all learned that to improve in anything we do, we need feedback. By not providing feedback through grades in their first semester, UM is depriving their students of development and growth opportunities. Such feedback will do much to not only improve the mental health of our students but also improve the resilience and competitiveness that a lack of grades and grade inflation take away. Please note that I am not minimizing the mental health issue; rather, I think we should be building the skills needed to deal with adversity and failure rather than protecting students from the adversity they will eventually encounter in their lives.
UM will not be producing much in the way of leaders and best by depriving them of the development opportunities that will make them better. Two final comments before I close. First, my opinions are my own and not necessarily those of Augusta University (AU) and the Hull College of Business (HCoB). Second, and related to the first, like AU and HCoB, I am committed to student success. In my classroom, student success is driven through rigor and a positive learning experience where grades are earned, not given, and feedback is the gold standard for personal development.
