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The University of Michigan, an elite “public ivy,” was highlighted in the New York Times about how it is changing its freshman grading policy from letter grades, to pass-fail.
The reason, Michigan explains, is that it will “improve student mental health.”
They go on to claim that this will “help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college” and that “they can explore a subject that may not come easily to them or take a course in a new field without the fear that a low grade may have long-term consequences.”
It is hard to imagine what “long-term consequences” any particular letter grade could have on anyone’s life.
And why would a young adult be “afraid” of any subject? Since when is learning a thing to be feared? I could see if the stakes were life and death, like in pilot training, where some fear of failure is necessary. But a class on British literature, or even accounting?
Moreover, it is hard to reconcile the fact that a “D” is “passing,” so what is the difference? More than one successful businessman, engineer, musician, doctor or lawyer, also had at least one “D” on their transcript. For most, it was a humbling reminder of how much they didn’t know, and to keep working at it. It can build character, and perseverance — the best lesson in life. The old saying that we “learn from mistakes” isn’t quite accurate: you learn by correcting mistakes. Ask any scientist, or tennis player.
There are a lot of obvious criticisms that could be pointed out about this policy from Michigan.
They aren’t alone of course, and even Yale Law grades its first-year law students on a pass-fail format.
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Coddling young adults is one of the problems, and it is also a way for universities to accommodate some students who really shouldn’t be in college, don’t want to be, or aren’t ready. With college enrollment down, and university overhead costs sky high, keeping student intake up is vital: every new student contributes to revenue in some way, while supporting a university’s reported numbers on matriculation rates, racial quotas, and financial aid awards. It also lets universities broadcast to the public, media and government that they are following non-discriminatory policy, where “discrimination” can include making unreasonable demands on certain students, such as academic performance.
The biggest problem with this kind of policy involves the purported university concern with student mental health: Michigan claims that its change in grading policy will improve it.
How, exactly? What do they mean by the term “mental health,” and why is this even a concern of an institution of higher learning? It invokes the long discredited university role of “in loco parentis” or acting as an effective parent. Universities, of course, worry about liability and lawsuits, so that is part of their motivation.
Perhaps their motivation also includes creating dependency rather than self-reliance. Maybe universities are making mental health worse — and perhaps it effectively serves their interests in doing so. With so much progressive ideological doctrine saturating university campuses, the ability to inculcate sympathetic, reciprocal behavior from students, reinforces their willingness to accept it.
Universities are in effect creating a perverse variation of the “Stockholm syndrome:” By treating students with such low regard about their own mental fitness, universities are imprisoning them in their own self-doubt. It is a form of effective psychological abuse, and makes students a captive group. If comfort can be shown by claiming that their fears and anxiety, or their “trauma response” to being away from home, and facing new demands, can be relieved in symbolic ways like removing grade pressure, then the self-reinforcing cycle of dependency and trust is reinforced in successively small ways. And when everyone merely “passes,” then no one stands out: rivalry, and competitive pressure are softened.
It also subtly serves the progressive political vision of a life-long captive society based on common group identity, and solidarity. Given that the vast majority of professors and staff are Democrats, college is a subtle political training institute as much as it is anything else. That first taste of a fair, equitable and classless society starts in the freshman year of the modern university.
Matthew G. Andersson is a law and policy author, college parent, and a graduate of the University of Chicago.
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