University of Michigan to shield first-semester grades from GPA, citing student mental health
Beginning in fall 2027, first-semester students in the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will have their grades converted to Pass or No Credit on external transcripts and generally excluded from their GPA. Students will still receive letter grades internally. The college has stated the change is intended in part to help curb what it describes as "the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals."
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The University of Michigan announced that starting in fall 2027, incoming students in its College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will have first-semester grades recorded as Pass or No Credit on external transcripts and excluded from GPA calculations, while still receiving internal letter grades. University officials cited the mental health of college-aged students as a key rationale for the change.
The Washington Examiner's commentary led with a challenge to the core premise of Michigan's justification, arguing that anxiety over grades is a normal emotional response rather than evidence of psychological harm, and that treating it as a mental health problem conflates ordinary discomfort with illness. The piece noted that difficult feedback — a poor exam score, a rejection, a critical performance review — carries developmental value that is lost when its consequences are reduced.
The Examiner also highlighted a detail drawn from research based at Michigan itself: the university's own Healthy Minds Study has documented declines in depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among college students for three consecutive years, with a Michigan researcher describing the improvement as "not a blip." The piece raised the question of whether describing the situation as an "unfolding crisis" is consistent with that trend.