Starting in fall 2027, incoming freshmen at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will have every first-semester letter grade scrubbed from their transcripts. In their place: a simple "P" for pass or "NC" for no credit. The university calls it the "LSA First-Semester Grade Covering Pilot Program."
The stated reason? To "curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals."
LSA is the university's largest college, serving approximately 19,700 undergraduate students across 19 total colleges on campus. Under the new policy, freshmen will still receive letter grades from their professors during the semester — they just won't appear on official transcripts and won't factor into first-semester GPAs. The grades get buried. Internally, the university retains them for academic advising, scholarships, athletic eligibility, financial aid, and degree progress. But as far as the outside world is concerned, every freshman who doesn't outright fail earned a participation ribbon.
And there's no opt-out. A university FAQ clarified that "an opt-in structure would defeat the purpose of facilitating students' transition to campus." So even students who earned a 4.0 and want their transcript to reflect it are out of luck. Accountability is now mandatory — in reverse.
The university's official language reads like it was drafted by a committee of guidance counselors who've never met a payroll. "Our goal is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys," the school stated. LSA is apparently "investing in students' well-being and growth by fostering a culture of connection and collaboration — rather than competition."
Connection and collaboration. At a school that charges out-of-state tuition north of $57,000 a year. Good to know the investment is going toward making sure nobody's feelings get bruised by a C-minus.
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, author of "Therapy Nation," said exactly what most functioning adults were already thinking. "We're raising a generation of students to believe that discomfort is dangerous. It isn't," Alpert said. "A bad grade can be upsetting, embarrassing and stressful. That's not a mental health emergency."
Alpert went further: "This is therapy culture invading the classroom. We've spent years turning normal human emotions into symptoms."
He's not wrong. The entire premise of the program assumes that an 18-year-old seeing a D on a midterm is a clinical event requiring institutional intervention. Not a signal that maybe the kid should study harder, switch majors, or stop playing video games until 3 a.m. on a Tuesday.
"College should be one of the places where young people discover that they're tougher than they think," Alpert added. "A bad grade isn't psychological harm. Sometimes it's the wake-up call a student needs."
Michigan isn't the first school to try this. MIT, Swarthmore College, and the California Institute of Technology all have some version of first-semester grade shielding. But those are small, elite institutions with acceptance rates in the single digits — places where virtually every admitted student was already at the top of their high school class. Michigan's LSA admits thousands of freshmen a year. Scaling a policy designed for hyper-selective campuses to a massive public university is a different experiment entirely.
The timing is worth noting, too. This announcement lands while universities across the country are under increasing scrutiny for skyrocketing tuition, declining academic standards, and graduates who can't find jobs that justify their debt. The response from Michigan isn't to raise expectations. It's to hide the evidence that expectations aren't being met.
The policy generated immediate backlash across conservative media, and for good reason. The university isn't eliminating bad grades. It's eliminating the consequences of bad grades — which, for anyone who's ever had a job, is the entire point of grades in the first place.
A university that hides failure from its own students isn't protecting mental health. It's manufacturing adults who've never been told no — and sending them into a job market that won't return the favor.