The plan was to improve the mental wellbeing of students, but abandoning the plan would help them with their mental wellbeing even more. They might feel bad about themselves if they see not-so-good grades, but they might also feel bad about themselves if they imagine that other people are thinking ill of them for needing to be protected from feeling bad about themselves if they see not-so-good grades.
I feel bad about how dishonest that justification seems. Protect my mind: I was a University of Michigan student once. In 1969, I was drawn by the experimental college, the Residential College, where, ironically, there were no grades.
పోస్ట్లు
37 కామెంట్లు:
By what metric is someone hiring a UMich grad supposed to judge them? I don't think this is doing Wolverines any favors.
"including being *unfairly* portrayed as coddled or unprepared for the demands of a rigorous Michigan education."
Do these people hear themselves speak? At all?
College is (was) supposed to be your first exposure to adulthood .
Booth review has reinstated the plan!
"College is (was) supposed to be your first exposure to adulthood ."
Yes, it has become something more like summer camp.
Imagine how they're going to feel when they apply for a job and the boss asks them for their grades and they say, "We don't have grades."
"I'm used to a judgment-free workspace. With naps."
“"I worry... that our students could bear the consequences of... misperceptions, including being unfairly portrayed as coddled or unprepared for the demands of a rigorous Michigan education."
Fear not, those rigorous demands sailed away long ago.
"I got this piece of paper that cost me $200,000 in student loans and I need to pay that back. Where's your nap room? And I don't work for Jews."
Althouse, in which foreign language did you pass your proficiency exam? I’m actually curious.
Back in ‘81, Eleanor Swift, my civil procedure professor, looked back on the days “When law schools were law schools, not country clubs”.
I don’t support a “no grades” policy as a general rules.
That said, we’re moving back into the direction of believing that so many jobs don’t really require a college degree, and certainly not a 4-year one. I actually do support THAT, as it happens. I think it’s more realistic and fair.
Those who are hiring non-college grads are presumably managing to hire without reference to college grades, therefore. Why wouldn’t they likewise manage how to hire those with more classroom time but also without grades? This seems a reasonable question. In both cases, you have to establish metrics, qualifications, and personal qualities without reference to grades.
Obviously there are jobs that do require higher education (doctors, engineers, etc. etc. etc.) and so that scenario would be different. But otherwise, what’s the difference from a hiring standpoint?
Assessment without pe-degree, but evidence of past, present, or future performance. A minority report, a DEIst catalog, maybe.
A certificate of authenticity and witness to degree.
Hampshire College, a wacky (but at one time prestigious) leftwing institution in western Massachusetts, had no grades. They were also heavily into "sustainability," and with administration approval lowered their flag to half staff when Trump was elected in 2016. They recently announced they are closing permanently due to declining enrollment and an unsustainable financial picture.
Somehow the residential college program reminds me of the movie where Billy Jack fought the town to save the kids at the hippie school, perhaps it’s the project on what it means to be a dead head. It does seem like a fun program though.
How can you tell who should get a degree and who should not without grades? Everybody who pays tuition gets one?
Ok, so... why not just skip all those classes altogether and let colleges give degrees to whoever is willing to pony up the $$$?
Having good grades at the University of Michigan is why most competent students pay good money (lots of it) to attend the University of Michigan.
Without grades, there is nothing to present to a prospective employer. If I were a top 20% student I would a)be furious and b) transfer immediately to someplace serious (admittedly hard to find).
Prof, when you applied to law schools, how did they deal with you having no undergrad grades and therefore no GPA? CC, JSM
Daily Affirmation: Saturday Night Live, with Stuart Smalley a.k.a. Al Franken
"I'm good enough, smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me".
You'd think rigorous testing and tough grading is the very best way for disadvantaged students to advance socioeconomically. They can rely on their merit to get ahead. But that is not what schools are doing. Instead they rely on grade inflation as a way to advance equity and to “decolonize” the classroom. Everybody gets an "A." But the least privileged students can't even fall back on their own achievements. And, not surprisingly, prospective employers think that every college student is a mentally ill moron. Surveys indicate that at least 40% of employers will not even hire a recent college graduate! I don't see how this is good policy.
The most important of beneficiary of first semester grades in the student. Now is the time for feedback that can be acted upon.
My friends daughter is at the Residential College at UM. I’ll have to ask them if they still have no grades. She loves it
Our University system is a complete disaster populated by the most incompetent people in the country.
It is long past time we stopped subsidizing the employment and retirement of mediocre "intellectuals" and burned the entire system to the ground.
Feeling bad about myself has led to improvement on several occasions.
University of Michigan used to have a good engineering school. How many people here want to use a system, be it a car, factory, or building design by a new Michigan grad that doesn't believe in testing to a standard?
U of M has been going through presidents quickly of late, and I'll wager that Domenico Grasso will have a tenure of no more than 3 years.
It all started when to flunk out a male student was to send him to Viet Nam.
Saint Croix said...
"I got this piece of paper that cost me $200,000 in student loans and I need to pay that back. Where's your nap room? And I don't work for Jews."
10/1/26, 2:48 PM
...
Is RCO hiring?
"Is RCO hiring?"
He'd like to expand but he's having a tough time getting a loan. You know who owns the banks, don't you?
Mason - too funny. I wish I thought of it.
Who's going to do his accounting? His current accountants Rosenbaum and Schwartz?
Does he know Sabin put mind control capsules in the polio vaccine?
You know when he watches Blazing Saddles ... He thinks Hedley Lamarr was the good guy!
Where did they get that crazy notion
“Hampshire College, a wacky (but at one time prestigious) leftwing institution in western Massachusetts, had no grades. …They recently announced they are closing permanently due to declining enrollment and an unsustainable financial picture.”
One of my daughter’s classmates from prep school went there. Parents were both MDs, and often did the Doctors Without Borders Thing. The three daughters got to live all around the world. She ended up a PA, but one younger sister became an MD. Both go abroad for medicine.
My sophomore and Junior year we didn’t have grades. Part of why I didn’t go to grad school right after undergraduate. The pre-meds were hammered hard for not having grades. Law school wasn’t as bad. Law schools looked hard at the LSAT. Med schools seemed to really want those grades.
My sister entered the Residential College in 1968. She loved it.
No grades? More coddling of the mediocre. This is how you end with Xavier Becerra as a candidate for Governor of the richest state in America. It's how you end up with an AOC as a possible candidate for President. Lowest common denominator is the official motto of the Democrat party.
MIT for years has done the freshman year pass-fail, to help ease the transition for kids realizing they may be in the 1%, but they're not the 1% of the 1%. The kids still take the courses, which include ballbreaking versions of Calc II (nerly everyone who gets into MIT has a 5 on BC Calc) and intro to circuit design, very seriously. They do have 'hidden grades' so the kids get feedback. And I think there is a way for the student to release the hidden grades for e.g. internships between frosh and soph years.
Plus in all STEM classes and schools there is the whole phenomenon of the prof writing the exam for himself and grading it on a curve, so you get 26% of the test right but still get a B. You may think you know nothing, but only in comparison to the prof.
Brown for years has let you take all your courses pass-fail. I don't know how many kids take them up on it. That may be a good self-sorting mechanism.
U of M has become a 'Public Ivy' as the college-bound population got bigger and more competitive. They may think pass-fail is a better alternative to kids jumping out of windows. CC, JSM
Bahaha. Bahahahahahah
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.