The University of Michigan is moving to hide freshman grades in its liberal arts college, a change officials say is meant to support student well-being and ease what they describe as a growing mental health crisis on campus. Starting this fall, incoming students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will be graded on a pass/no credit basis during their first semester.
The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, known as LSA, said students will still receive feedback from professors and will know how they performed in each class. But those first-semester marks will not count toward GPA calculations. Transcripts will list the courses as automatically pass/no credit, while the underlying grades will still be kept on record for academic awards, scholarships, internships, advising, professional opportunities, and cases where a student changes to a major outside LSA. Beginning in the second semester, grades will appear on transcripts and factor into GPAs as usual.
LSA is the largest of Michigan’s 19 colleges and enrolls nearly 20,000 students, making the policy a significant change for a major slice of the university’s undergraduate population. The college said the effort is tied to the school’s campus-wide Student Success Initiative, which it described as centered on helping students build early momentum. University officials argued that covering grades can help students start strong and foster collaboration rather than competition.
That rationale places Michigan among a growing list of selective schools that have adopted similar approaches. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, Swarthmore College and Wellesley College have also used comparable programs, showing that the debate over first-year grading is not limited to one campus. The Michigan move adds to a broader push in higher education to rethink how much pressure freshmen should face as they adjust to college life.
