You can always count on the government and its related entities to find a problem and offer a "solution" that somehow makes it worse. When health insurance premiums were creeping up, they pushed the "Affordable Care Act" down our throats. We were promised it would save us $2,500 a year. Rates skyrocketed, and care declined. They offered student loans, and tuition skyrocketed, too.
That's a pattern. So when I learned the University of Michigan was going to "curb the student mental health crisis" by hiding grades and scrubbing transcripts, I was not surprised. This, too, will only make things worse.
University of Michigan will hide grades, scrub transcripts to curb student 'mental health crisis' https://t.co/TELWjQXzhM pic.twitter.com/5jsSbL2qEp
— New York Post (@nypost) August 8, 2026
University of Michigan’s liberal arts college said grades for incoming freshman during their first semester will be hidden and excluded from their transcripts to “curb the mental health crisis” among students.
Starting this fall, the public research university’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will grade freshmen in their first semester solely on a pass/no credit basis instead of letter grades, the school announced in a statement.
The LSA college, the largest of the university’s 19 colleges, said that students will still know their grades and receive feedback from professors, but their grades won’t be factored into their GPAs.
“Helping all students establish early momentum has been recognized as the most important element in U-M’s campus-wide Student Success Initiative,” the college wrote.
“We believe that covering grades will help students start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.”
The first question we must ask is why college students are having a mental health crisis? Could it be because many of them spent a few years of their education being forced into "remote learning" thanks to Anthony Fauci, Randi Weingarten, and the Democrats who shut down schools?
Ask anyone who teaches, and for the past several years they've been dealing with the fallout of that crisis. Freshmen are coming to college requiring remedial math, because teaching kids that 2 + 2 = 4 is now white supremacy, and literacy rates have fallen in 47 out of 50 states.
Here in Wisconsin, where black students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) test at the bottom nationally in reading and math, the Democrats running for governor want to end the state's school choice voucher program. Francesca Hong calls it a matter of equity, which is her way of saying she wants to knock the 15,000 black kids who managed to escape MPS back down a peg or two, lest they stop becoming illiterate government dependents. School vouchers are one of the few things that actually help curb crime, something Hong also says she wants to do as part of her "public safety" plan.
While China teaches calculus to fifth graders, the U.S. teaches that there are 57 genders and Israel is evil. The decline is a choice, and why we tolerate it is beyond me. A complete revamp of the system is not only necessary, but a moral obligation at this point. But what won't fix this is lying to college students about their grades. By hiding the reality of what their weaknesses are and refusing to have frank discussions about how they can fix that, we're just delaying the inevitable.
Instead of hiding grades, the University of Michigan should be pushing for reform in public schools, from kindergarten through senior year. A curriculum that focuses on literacy (and looks to Mississippi for how to do that), rigorous mathematics, and a return to using textbooks and writing things by hand instead of relying on technology is the way forward. Sure, the teachers unions will wail and gnash their teeth over this, but they work for us parents and the general public.
And it's time we started demanding better.
