University of Michigan drops first-semester letter grades for freshmen

Grade inflation hit 74% of U-M undergrad grades in 2022 review

The University of Michigan will replace letter grades for first-semester freshmen with “pass or no credit” designations starting in the fall of 2027. The university said the program is designed to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals” and to help students “acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys.”

The pilot covers students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which enrolls about half of Michigan’s roughly 8,000 first-year students. A Michigan spokesman declined to comment on how the university reached the decision to enact the pilot.

Although grades won’t be recorded on student transcripts or affect grade-point averages, professors will still assign them internally to track eligibility for scholarships and academic awards, the university said.

Schools including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology have implemented similar “grade-covering” programs in past years. The shift at Michigan, among the nation’s largest and best-known public universities, comes as institutions wrestle with grade inflation and the need for remedial instruction for freshmen unprepared for college-level classes. University of California math and science professors have urged UC regents to reinstate entrance exams because so many freshmen were unprepared. A recent University of California San Diego faculty report found that the share of students placed in classes to remediate elementary- and middle-school math before they could take precalculus rose to 8.5% in 2025 from 0.5% in 2020.

In May, Harvard University faculty voted to approve a 20% cap on the number of A’s per undergraduate course in an effort to curb grade inflation. The cap won’t apply to A-minuses.

At Michigan, a review by the news site MLive found that 74.1% of all undergraduate grades in 2022 were an A+, A or A-, up from 57.6% a decade earlier.

Kenneth Lowande, a former Michigan political science professor who left for Rice University, said he didn’t think the new policy would make much of a difference because grade inflation had made grades largely irrelevant. Michigan no longer mandates the SAT or ACT for undergraduate admissions. “Grades have lost their value as an indication of quality or excellence,” Lowande said.

Students welcomed the policy. Student body president Summit Louth, 20, said he had spoken to around 50 classmates and they were either happy the policy was coming or jealous it didn’t apply during their freshmen years. Poor mental health is closely tied to academic stress and anxiety among students, Louth said. He earned all A’s and one B in his first semester and doubted he would have worked as hard had his classes been pass/fail, but he said he thinks he would have learned more without the pressure of earning high marks.

Derek Peterson, a history professor and former chair of the faculty government, said he believes the move is generally beneficial because it gives students a chance to explore subjects more freely. Students are under more stress today than their predecessors, he said, including the distraction of social media, bleaker job prospects and less secure economic conditions.

“The idea that our kids are somehow more coddled is simply not true,” Peterson said. “If we can find ways to open up space for students to experiment while also protecting their future employability, which means protecting the GPAs, I think it is a good idea.”