To Help New Students Adapt, Some Colleges Are Eliminating Grades

Parents Forum
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The above article describes a number of ways in which colleges are experimenting with “un-grading”, in order to assist students who, for whatever reasons, have trouble with the transition to the academic demands of college. Some proposals postpone grading until farther along in college, but others propose doing away altogether with traditional grading.

It seems to me that this is simply postponing the eventual reckoning for a student who is just not prepared to do the work, or for whatever reason, is unable to do the work. Colleges already have many supports in place for those who need help. There are ways to take incompletes or withdraw from a semester if a student has an emergency. But doing away with grades, because some students, for whatever reasons, cannot do the work to an expected level of mastery? What next? Un-grading for bar exams, board exams, licensing exams?

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Why do these colleges need to “experiment” with “un-grading” now that they didn’t need to before? Do the students they admitted in recent years have more “trouble with the transition to the academic demands of college” than the students they admitted in years past? If so, what does that tell us?

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We homeschooled for years using an un-grading model. I didn’t really see the point of assigning grades to elementary and middle school work as both I (and the children) knew when they had done well and when they hadn’t.

So, I am not necessarily against that model. Released from even the concept of ‘grades’, my children flourished in a homeschool environment where the goals were learning how to work hard, use critical reasoning, master material and take on constructive feedback. None of that required grades.

When the kids went to a traditional public school, they also had no problem working within a traditional grading system. Our un-grading system hadn’t hampered them in the least, nor were they ‘behind’, nor did they lack the ability to master material.

As with any system, the devil is in the details. I have my fair share of philosophical issues with grades themselves, they often don’t give universally understood signals, and are used most often to rank students rather than figuring out who needs more assistance on a particular lesson and who understood/mastered the material.

I’m not sure if the proposed solution will end up removing stress from students, most un-grading systems still have feedback processes so students not mastering materials won’t be unaware of their progress (or lack thereof). It should be interesting seeing this experiment play out…much like the states are vessels of legislative experimentation - colleges too can play a vital role in trying educational ideas to see what works and what doesn’t.

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UC Santa Cruz didn’t offer letter grades until 1997, so it’s not a new concept. I miss the days of UCSC being known for being “crunchy!”

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Doesn’t Evergreen still use an un-grading method? As well as Hampshire? There are probably more I don’t know off the top of my head.

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This is hardly a new idea - MIT has been doing it for ages, and I don’t think anyone has ever accused MIT students of being “coddled.”

OTOH, postponing traditional grading isn’t a panacea, and it may detract from more meaningful inquiry into how grading should work and whether it’s serving its intended purpose.

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I believe you are right!

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Almost 30 years ago, MIT did freshman year pass/fail. (Maybe they still do?) All your work was graded, and your knew your final grade in the class, but only P or F went on the transcript. It was really valuable because students who had traditionally been top of their class (often without working very hard) could adjust to the reality of being average without the stress of what their transcript would say. It also encouraged students to figure out how to balance schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

Were there kids who “took advantage” and choose to not study or wasted their time? Of course. But most kids there wanted to learn and wanted to do well, so it was more about stress reduction.

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I could not agree more. They are simply delaying the time when students have to deal with the realities of life, like competition, being evaluated, stress, and the possibility of failing. Just as many high schools are doing students no favors by reducing the demands on them (eliminating finals, re-takes of tests, etc.) some colleges are doing students a disservice by watering down school requirements.

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it reminds me of a parent who homeschooled her child. She gave him all A’s and described him as brilliant. When applying for college she would not let him take any AP exams or the ACT/SAT. She was very upset that no colleges would accommodate her.

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Yes, first semester at MIT is graded pass/fail. The same at Caltech (first 2 quarters) and HMC (first semester). All three of them have had this policy for a long time, because they had much more difficult required curricula than all other colleges in the US (and not due to some recent changes). They shouldn’t be discussed together with the other schools that are “experimenting” with this approach.

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It’s actually pass or no record. That is, if you fail, the class won’t show up on your transcript.

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MIT was the school I was trying to remember. Yes…they have done this forever.

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I believe Swarthmore is P/F the 1st semester, as well.

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Doesn’t Brown do so as well?

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Doing a semester is one thing. Removing grading entirely is an entirely different thing. When an employer asks for your grades, you need something to show them. Telling them that you haven’t been graded will hurt in that situation if you don’t have grades for a large number of semesters.

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I would just caution that the colleges being named here by posters (MIT, Brown, Swarthmore, etc.) are from a very small section of colleges that have students who almost entirely would have done well in high school GPA and on standardized exams. Most often (not always) they have a family background that focuses on school, and they understand that they have to learn the material eventually e.g. to stay at MIT.

Of course, a few may have come from such poor educational backgrounds that they really are in shock when they have to perform well at Brown etc., but not many. In other words, a grading philosophy that could work well at elite schools with motivated and driven students (who both applied to and got into said schools) might not have the same results across the wide spectrum of higher education.

My spouse currently teaches at a very small commuter school with students so poorly prepared for college that one asked, mid-way through the semester in a writing course, what a paragraph is. Now, on one hand, you might think these students would be the very ones who would benefit from the “ungrading” approach, but in my experience with low competition colleges (at which husband has taught in three states scattered across the country), many of the students there have never actually been graded in K-12 with a decent standard grading. I don’t mean a demanding standard, just something that didn’t give an A or B merely for turning in anything at all and not causing problems in the classroom. They are used to getting an A or B for doing anything, which will not work in the world of work. Because of previous experience, these students often seem less prone to drive themselves regardless of grades than a student at a UC as highlighted in the article. Even with grades, it is difficult to get many students to turn in work on time (or late!) or study at all for any tests or quizzes.

Now granted, these are students whom K-12 public education has completely failed and who are in difficult circumstances, but graduating from this type of college Pass/Fail would not do the students any favors, unlike graduating from Brown Pass/Fail. Being at such a college is already a strike of sorts; everyone getting a Pass would be worse for the better students there.

I don’t have an answer to this issue in general, but seeing the types of colleges named by posters, I just wanted to throw into the thread that most colleges are not elite or even very competitive for admissions, and the student bodies there might differ in how they respond to ungrading. More importantly as far as I am concerned, the gifted students who do end up at such “uncompetitive” schools for various reasons- money, family, work- are better served by having grades to show that they are, in fact, performing well since the school name is not going to get them any jobs by itself. It’s important not to evaluate a policy based on Brown and MIT.

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Most of the linked page focused on UCSC, which originally started with only narrative evaluations, then added optional letter grades, then made letter grades required, presumably due to scaling issues as the school grew. So it is not like UCSC never had unorthodox grading before.

The linked page also mentions MIT with first semester P/NR grading and second semester A/B/C/NR grading. Caltech’s first two terms of P/F grading is not mentioned. It also mentions that JHU previously had something similar to MIT but switched to ordinary letter grading for first semester students in 2017.

Yes, especially in the context of admission to professional schools like medical and law schools. But also, colleges which have secondary admission to majors that are at or over capacity also use grades for this purpose.

Perhaps the density of pre-meds at JHU meant that covered first semester grades really did not matter, since the pre-meds would have to uncover them when applying to medical school, so they still stressed about getting the covered A grade.

Brown does something similar for students who do not earn a passing grade (A, B, C, or S). However, the absence of a full load of graded courses in a semester on the transcript would hint that there may have been a failed course there, since Brown probably has few part-time students.

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In the case of MIT, which very quickly re-instated a standardized test requirement as soon as pandemic restrictions were eased enough to allow students access to the test, it seems as if their P/F freshman year policy really is meant to help their highly qualified students make the transition to the incredibly demanding work at MIT.

I’m thinking more of the schools who are admitting students who aren’t necessarily highly qualified, but who fit the school’s desired profile via “holistic” admissions, no test score required. Some of these students have a terrible time transitioning to college, because they are just not ready to do college level work. A no-grade system either postpones the inevitable, or worse yet, if ungrading is applied all four years, means that they’ll simply be processed through without developing any mastery of any skills, sort of what their experience in high school may have been. Many years ago I knew a student who went to Hampshire. She spent over two years there, never really doing anything. I think her parents finally brought her back home - I’m not sure if the school wouldn’t have let her just drift on and on there.

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Very well put. But if this movement proceeds it will likely be adopted by the non-competitive colleges in the name of “equity”, as was mentioned in the article.

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