What to Know
College can be a big adjustment. Recently, the University of Michigan introduced a pilot program to reduce pressure for freshmen as they adjust to college life, but the proposed plan turned out to be surprisingly controversial. The university’s College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts originally planned on hiding students’ letter grades during their first semester of college.
While LSA freshmen would still receive actual letter grades from their professors, those grades would not appear on their transcripts. Instead, their transcripts would either say “pass” or “no credit.”
The new grading program was proposed to help protect students’ mental health and ease them into college academics. Critics, however, accused the university of “coddling” students, and a huge debate ensued, causing the university to drop its original plan.
Mental health was mentioned as a big reason for this plan.
In August, the university said the pilot program was introduced to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.” Derek Peterson, a professor at the university, spoke highly of the proposed program when speaking to ABC News. He mentioned how adjusting to college life is about more than just academics, as many freshmen are also living away from their families for the first time and working, among other potential stressors.
“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,” the professor told the news outlet.
But a decent number of people disagreed.
The University of Michigan has announced it is dropping first-semester grades in an effort to “curb the mental health crisis” facing many college students. @ReeveWill reports. https://t.co/fcNL2yvFvG
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 12, 2026
Some of the program’s critics rejected the idea that it’s truly protecting students’ mental health. Those critics are of the mindset that challenges, disappointment, and failure are all parts of life, and students don’t need to be protected from those things. Instead, critics argued, they can learn to cope with these sources of stress through exposure rather than avoidance.
“Life is stressful, and learning to adapt to college is one way to learn to adapt to life,” one critic of the program wrote on Reddit. Someone else said, “Facing adversity should be part of the learning experience.”
Others seemed concerned that students would not be as dedicated to their studies if all they had to worry about was passing their classes, rather than getting good grades. “If I knew grades didn’t matter the first semester, I probably wouldn’t have tried as hard, and wouldn’t have set good study habits for the next four years,” another person argued.
And some people even accused the university of “coddling” students and making them more “entitled.”
“The point is we should not be coddling students and shielding them from adversity for the purpose of making them feel better,” a fourth critic wrote.
Ultimately, the University of Michigan announced it would not move forward with the plan after all the backlash.
Oh wow 😬 University of Michigan will HIDE first-semester grades on transcripts for students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts It’s to “curb the mental health crisis” AND The policy is mandatory for all students bc “covering an individual’s grades will inadvertently become equated w/them not doing well in a class”
— Neetu Arnold (@neetu_arnold) August 6, 2026
Originally, it was set to start in the fall of 2027. In a letter to LSA leaders, university president Domenico Grasso said the decision to pause the program was made at least in part because of “extensive media coverage, much of which consists of distorted narratives about our intentions, and, most concerningly, about the academic strength and resilience of our students,” per Inside Higher Ed.
The university’s president also wrote, “It has become clear that the misconceptions and questions raised about the program put the pilot’s success at risk. I worry further that our students could bear the consequence of those misconceptions, including being unfairly portrayed as coddled or unprepared for the demands of a rigorous Michigan education.”
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