De-Grading

My college career did not get off to a great start from an academic standpoint.

Three days before classes started, I got a concussion, my third at the time. I wandered around this unfamiliar locale in something of a daze and struggled to put coherent thoughts together. That’s not a good foundation on which to build academic success.

I also was enjoying the hell out of my newfound freedom, which kinda sorta had led to that concussion. I had chosen a university far, far, far away from the toxicity of my birth parents’ home, and every mile along the drive out seemed to shed another pound of the weight I’d (largely unknowingly) been carrying for so, so long.

I also started dating my future wife a few weeks later.

And broke my foot the next day.

My enthusiasm for that whole “class” thing waned quickly. The first day of classes turned into a night in which I and some of my newfound friends visited the library to study. I don’t think I ever went to the library to study another day in my college life.

The broken foot made getting to class incredibly inconvenient. I know: Waa-waa. Our campus wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small when you were traversing it on crutches, and the time allotted to get from, say, microeconomics to English 1 was short.

I also was pretty damn lazy, and let’s be honest: That was the main problem. It was much easier to stay in my dorm room and hang out with the various people I had met (did I mention one of them was my future wife?) than to hoof it on one leg to a Music Appreciation class.

Yes, I took Music Appreciation. Don’t judge me. In my mind, I deserved a few fluff classes. And Music Appreciation was definitely a fluff class. I learned that on Day 1 when I walked in and the entire starting five of our basketball team was there. No offense to them, but academics weren’t exactly a major focus of their college journey either.

And so when my first semester grades came out, well, let’s just say I hadn’t exactly excelled academically. That Music Appreciation class? I’d gotten a D. Yes, a fucking D in Music Fucking Appreciation. I guess I didn’t appreciate classical music as much as I was appreciating the hell out of the booming grunge movement. If we’d been studying the recently released Pearl Jam Ten album of Nirvana’s Nevermind, I would have aced the hell out of it. But Tchaikovsky? Beethoven? Yeahno.

I now realize that I was born too early.

The University of Michigan recently announced they are dropping grades for first-semester freshmen. The goal is to curb a mental-health crisis among our young people, which definitely exists, though I don’t think the possibility or reality of getting a D in Music Appreciation is to blame.

It also recognized that students are reaching college woefully unprepared to survive academically, let alone thrive. Blame it on social media (yes), the pandemic (yes), the state of our public schools (yes), or shitty parenting (yes), but today’s college freshmen don’t know jack about shit. Unlike me, who could have appreciated music and simply and stupidly chose not to, these dumb-dumbs find themselves at a loss to do the basics even if they wanted to.

For example, a recent University of California San Diego faculty report found that the percentage of students placed in classes to remediate elementary- and middle-school math before they could take precalculus increased to 8.5% in 2025 from 0.5% in 2020.

Of course, this isn’t a first-semester grade problem. This is a “Who the hell admitted these idiots?” problem. Sorry, but University of Michigan is a prestigious academic institution, and if they are admitting people who can’t handle first-semester grades, that’s an admissions-team issue. Are you really telling me that they can’t build a cohort who can get at least a C in Music Appreciation if they put their little still-forming minds to it?

Surprisingly, that’s not how people are clapping back at this change. They are taking it on from a grade-inflation standpoint. Grades don’t mean squat, they say. Kenneth Lowande, a former Michigan political science professor who left for Rice University, said in an article in the Wall Street Journal that he didn’t think the new policy would make much of a difference because grade inflation had made grades largely irrelevant. Freshman Me would have gotten a B- in Music Appreciation because of grade inflation, under this theory.

Ya know who loves this policy change? Students.

Well duh.

Student body president Summit Louth said he had spoken to around 50 classmates and they were either happy or jealous the policy didn’t exist when they were freshmen. For his part, Summit (who the hell names their kid Summit?) earned all A’s and one B in his first semester. But he said he doubted he would have worked as hard had the classes been pass-fail.

Of course he wouldn’t have worked as hard. And that’s part of the problem.

This policy change merely kicks the can down the road. Not giving unprepared, mentally fragile students grades in their first semester creates a second semester problem, a sophomore year problem, a degree problem. It delays weeding out those who shouldn’t be at the University of Michigan … or any college at that point in their lives. And that’s fine! We should be doing more to dispel the notion that college is both necessary and for everyone.

But for degrees to mean something, grades need to matter. And to matter, they need to exist. The easier it is to earn a degree, the less that degree should mean to potential employers. Waiting to start holding students accountable for doing more than take up space cheapens a degree.

But let’s be clear: This isn’t a college problem. This is, among other things, a public education system problem. Colleges are for some dumb reason admitting students who can’t hack it. Maybe they don’t have a choice anymore. Maybe this is truly a societal-level problem and universities have to take the brightest of the dim bulbs.

For me, I’m filing this in my increasingly thick folder labeled “All the ways America is a fading empire.” When you can’t produce college freshmen who can handle grades, you’re giving up. There is no solution to the public education problem leading up to college. Throwing money at it doesn’t work. Incentives don’t work. We’re simply getting dumber, and we’ve passed the point of no return.

Now if you’ve excuse me … I have some music to go appreciate.

De-Grading

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