Adding and Subtracting – Tests Come In, Grades Go Out

It wasn’t so long ago that colleges were singing the praises of eliminating standardized testing requirements, or at least making them optional. But the pendulum has swung back, and many colleges and universities, including all of the Ivy League schools, are returning to requiring testing.

Remarkably, as many schools move back to testing, at least one school has moved away from grading students – at least initially, in a pilot program that will launch next year. And that move comes from a major public university – the University of Michigan. Students enrolled in LSA, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, will not receive letter grades for the first semester of college. Instead, their transcripts will reflect either pass (P) or no credit (NC).  The university is  reacting to the mental health crises that seem to be plaguing higher education by lessening the pressure on incoming freshmen. That policy has long been applied at Swarthmore College, a top private school near Philadelphia, which has long had a credit (CR)/non-credit (NC) policy for first semester freshman year.

Swarthmore’s policy has been in place in order to assist students in adapting to college-level work. But it also clearly states on its website: “You will receive written evaluations and usually grade equivalents from your instructors, copies of which will be shared with your academic adviser and placed in your file. These are referred to as ‘shadow grades.'” These grades matter because they are considered when students are applying into a major and qualifying for internships.

So no sloughing off at Swat; just lowering the pressure and recognizing the difference between the last semester of high school and the first semester of college!

And it appears that the program at Michigan is similar:

         While LSA students will still receive grades and instructor feedback in  every course as they always have, final grades will not be recorded on their external transcripts and will not be reflected in their GPAs. LSA students’ official transcripts will state that all grades in the first semester are automatically designated as P/NC….. The university will retain  internal records of the grades LSA first-year students earn during their  first semester for purposes of compliance, academic advising, potential  academic awards and scholarships, and for students’ use as they apply for internships, majors outside of LSA, or other academic and         professional opportunities.

I graduated magna cum laude from NYU, but on my first test in Spanish class freshman year, I received a C, my one and only over the next four years. It certainly was a wake-up call as I adjusted to the rigors of college, but it would have been very nice to have known at that time that the grade would not have torpedoed my entire college GPA.