The University of Michigan announced that it will drop letter grades for some first-semester students beginning next year, adopting a “pass-fail” system to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.”
The plan will begin in the fall of 2027 at the university’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts, The New York Times reported. That is approximately half of the university’s 8,000 freshman class, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Students will be assigned grades of “P” for pass and “NC” for no credit on official transcripts, according to The Washington Post. Grades earned during the first semester will not be used to calculate grade-point averages, the newspaper reported.
“Helping all students establish early momentum has been recognized as the most important element in U-M’s campus-wide Student Success Initiative,” the school said in a statement posted online. “We believe that covering grades will help students start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.
“Our goal is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys -- core elements of a liberal arts and sciences education.”
Thousands of freshman students at the University of Michigan will not see letter grades on their report cards next fall. https://t.co/xejX8LRoYN
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 11, 2026
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, “Good Morning America” reported.
The new grading plan, reported earlier by The Chronicle of Higher Education, is similar to how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology records grades, according to the Times. The California Institute of Technology also has a pass-fail “grade-covering” program, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Brown University in Rhode Island gives students two grading options, the Times reported, citing the school’s Office of the Registrar. One is a letter grade of A, B, C or no credit, while the other choice is a grade of satisfactory or no credit, according to the newspaper.
Swarthmore College stopped publishing letter grades for first-semester students on transcripts during the 1970s, according to the Post.
Summit Louth, Michigan’s student body president, called the grading change “an incredible thing” and said that students he had heard from have overwhelmingly supported the new policy, the Times reported.
“It will do a lot to help get students into a routine that is healthy and sustainable for the time they are here,” the junior told the newspaper. “You’re just figuring out how to be an adult and live on your own.
“It gets extremely stressful having to balance that with also wanting to be a straight-A student.”
The policy has its critics, including Rick Hess, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Hess called it “exactly the wrong diagnosis.”
“It turns out that swaddling college students does not actually improve their mental health,” he told the Times. “It creates entitlement. It creates a lack of productive tension.”
Derek Peterson, a history professor and former chair of Michigan’s faculty government, told The Wall Street Journal that the move is generally beneficial.
“The idea that our kids are somehow more coddled is simply not true,” Peterson told the newspaper. “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.”
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