Learning Without Fail
I have come to think that most of the absurdities of decision-making within educational institutions comes down to laziness. More specifically, finding ways to reduce the workload of those who work within such institutions, both staff and faculty. A recent example of this is to be found at the University of Michigan, which has announced that as of the Fall of 2027, incoming students will not receive a letter grade in any of their first-semester classes. They will instead get just an indication of ‘pass’ or ‘no-credit’, the word ‘fail’ for the latter category being presumably too trauma-inducing.
Now this will only be the policy in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. That is apparently one big school at UM, in fact the biggest, as half the incoming class of 8,000 enrolls in it each year.
The reason for this new policy? According to the WSJ,
A Michigan spokesman declined to comment about 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.
An interesting half-assed kind of policy, then. It’s a ‘pilot’, so it might be abandoned, and of course those first-year, first-semester students will know that they did get a grade in every class they took, it’s just that they won’t be told what it is. So, half-assed and sneaky, I guess.
Another quote from the WSJ is given without attribution, and it says UM is doing this ‘to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals,” according to the school.’
This crisis is not unfolding among the 4,000 students who enter UM’s other schools, then? That seems odd.
And half-assed.
One thing this policy will do is prevent special pleading by incoming students. Any 21st century faculty member knows that once grades are given, there follows a parade of students who need theirs to be higher for very good reasons. Said students will email or visit their prof – repeatedly if necessary – to make their case. This new policy means that won’t happen – maybe – to faculty teaching first-year first-semester students. (What I suspect will happen is students pestering their profs to tell them what grade they ‘really’ got in the class.)
I am sure that at UM just as at UWO, that first semester is when a big percentage of the special pleading happens, as students who have been assured all through their high school careers that they are excellent students find that A’s are rather harder to come by in University. The WSJ notes that this new policy ‘comes as schools wrestle with grade inflation and the need for remedial instruction for freshmen ill-prepared for college-level classes.’
So, the solution is to put off telling them how ill-prepared they are at least for a semester.
My prediction: the pilot will end with a recommendation to extend this to students’ entire first year at UM. Then students can just be notified at the end of that year that their secret grades indicate that they have failed to attain the (hidden) GPA needed to stay at the University, without their having been given any marks to complain about along the way. Easy-peasy, at least for the faculty and the counselling staff.
But hey, that’s my cynical view. The WSJ asked people on the ground what they thought of this. One of those was Summit Louth, the current head of UM’s student government, so clearly a man with his hand on the pulse.
Louth, 20 years old, said he earned all A’s and one B in his first semester and doubted he would have worked as hard had the classes been pass/fail. But he thinks he would have learned more from his classes without the pressure of earning high marks.
That makes perfect sense. He would have worked less hard and learned more. I believe that. A sure-fire formula for lifetime sucess, surely.
However, the best take on this comes from someone with a PhD, a prof at UM, who says this:
Derek Peterson, a history professor and former chair of the faculty government, said he believes the move is generally beneficial because it will give 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.”
Explore, Experiment – and don’t forget Experience. The Three E’s. Just be sure to protect that GPA.
And, ‘coddled’? These students? An outrageous thought.
One great virtue in having a PhD of which most people are unaware is that it enables one to formulate noble-sounding reasons to support one’s own self-interest. Professor Peterson is a fine exemplar of that. It is hard to give marks, unless of course you give all of your students A’s, which is the preferred strategy of many faculty, as well as some entire universities. Students are unhappy when they get low marks and they bother you about raising them, sometimes relentlessly. Some will even enlist their parents in the effort to lobby a professor to reconsider the failing mark he gave Johnny.
The most common response one hears from faculty to the undeniable grade inflation in contemporary education is to eliminate grades altogether. Any self-respecting PhD can provide high-sounding motivations for that policy, also – like ‘Explore, Experiment and Experience’. But there is no denying one fact: being a faculty member in an institution in which no grades are given, or alternatively, in which all grades given are As, is way easier than being in one in which you are expected to give marks that range from A+ down to F.
The recognition of that undeniable fact by secondary-school teachers (and their unions and administrators) is what got us to this place in PSE. It is not a surprise that university faculty want to follow suit.