I failed calculus twice. Lowering the bar wouldn’t have helped me

My first semester in college was a disaster. My second was worse. 

I was an engineering major. On my very first Physics exam I earned a 100%, the second 52%, and a whopping 12% on the third. The requirements of my college dictated that averaging less than 60% on “in-semester” exams would automatically produce a failing grade for the course without being allowed to take its final exam. 

Calculus was not a bed of roses either. I earned 11% on its final exam. I failed calculus again the following semester and got dismissed from the University – that was the rule: fail the same course twice and out you go.

Eventually, the university offered “pardon” exams for dismissed students requiring 70% or better to be re-admitted. I studied calculus all summer and scored 69.5%. It took administrators two full weeks to decide if they will round up. They did. The rest is history.

So, what did I learn over that stressful summer? 

Not that engineering is not for me, not that women cannot do math, not that I’m not smart enough, and not that I don’t “belong.” The University already told me I don’t belong if I am not successful. 

What I learned instead was how to master difficult material. My robust college preparation was not enough for the rigors of college. Most importantly, I learned I would not be coddled. 

I now know the point of going to college is to graduate it. Not belong to it. 

Perhaps President Grasso of the University of Michigan and his colleagues were thinking along the same lines when they decided to rescind their new grading policy for some freshmen – removing letter grades and offering pass/fail instead. Or maybe it was the massive pushbacks that caused the reversal in their policy. 

The public made it clear: they expect academic excellence in return for paying tuition.

The officials at the University of Michigan report that they developed the pass/fail policy to help reduce mental health issues among freshmen. Perhaps the real concern behind the now-rescinded grading policy was to keep the freshmen from dropping out – to boost retention – and potentially to recruit more freshmen as the demographic cliff looms. 

Alas, softer grading mars the reputation of the University of Michigan as the flagship of the state and conveys the message to freshmen that the University does not believe they will succeed. This is why their faculty senate pushed back on this new grading policy too.

Similarly, Yale is fighting grade inflation by attempting to place benchmarks on the percentage of students per grade category. But conversely, its faculty senate pushed back with “new grading guidance should minimize student harm.”

The reasoning for protecting students’ mental health through softer grading practices rests on two faulty premises: [1] poor grades cause mental health deficits (“harm”), and [2] post-freshmen students are somehow better at coping with low grades. 

Whether for freshmen or upper classmen, poor grades do not cause harm; unfair grades do. 

Poor grades can either show a student where to better invest their talents or galvanize them into success (as my own example).

High standards for success and the expressed belief that the student can meet them communicate belonging rather than exclusion. Professors and administrators must convey they are taking the students’ intellectual capacity seriously enough to expect excellent work.

From my collegiate teaching experience approaching three decades, poor grades do not result in poor teaching evaluations. What does produce unfavorable evaluations are unfair assessments of student success, wasting precious educational resources, and “dumbing-down” course content.

Moreover, this generation of undergraduates has a life expectancy of 80 – 100 years, and the world population exceeds 8 billion people. So, competition for a job has become fierce compared to my college days 35 years ago. While protecting students from competition in college through softer grading policies may reduce immediate stress, graduates eventually must compete at work and life. Grades must serve as a measure of the skills and knowledge alumni bring to the workforce which is what university reputations live and die on. That is why academic excellence must be the core tenet for all institutions of higher education. 

There is another wrinkle. Artificial intelligence (AI) is not going away, only becoming more capable. This is a nightmare for most educators, especially for subjects like math and writing. While education has surmounted similar threats before, like the calculator and the internet, AI is a tougher challenge because learning requires active intellectual engagement. 

The combination of AI, softer grading, and less competition serve to discourage students from growing their competence. Instead, the key factor that increases a sense of self-reliance and belonging in college is academic success and excellence.

The term academic excellence has become a euphemism for privilege, unfortunately. 

Students from high-income backgrounds are 4 times more likely to succeed in college than those from low-income backgrounds. Furthermore, high-achieving, low-income students often do not pursue education in selective schools. 

But, there is another side to that coin. Precisely because of inequities in college readiness, academic excellence is an equity obligation, rather than an elitist aspiration. 

Educational equity and academic excellence need not be competing goals. Institutions have a responsibility to respond proactively to diverse student needs while ensuring academic standards are maintained. In fact, equity and excellence are mutually reinforcing commitments in undergraduate education.

Colleges must build effective remediation practices and invest resources into not only promoting standards of academic excellence but also creating pathways to success for all students from diverse backgrounds.

So, the bar for excellence need not be lowered (e.g. softer grading); educational opportunities and resources need to be elevated.

Of the 15 public institutions of higher education in Michigan, more than half explicitly tout academic excellence in their promotional materials and strategic plans. So, the softer grading policies the University of Michigan is toying with leave the public wondering why they are straying from the academic excellence they promise.

To bring the point home in real life, who wants to pay for a clumsy ballet performance? Or support an athlete who isn’t willing to sweat? Or a scientist who makes bad predictions?

Success requires hard work, facing challenges, and failure. And success is often unsightly – ballerinas have ugly feet, athletes suffer injuries, scientists often need glasses, and failure bruises everyone’s ego. 

But college is not for learning how to protect one’s ego. College is for learning the skills for lifelong intellectual growth, earning associated credentials to support a well-employed life, and most importantly for having the skills to learn from failure.