This winter, the student members of the Committee on Educational Affairs (CEA) brought an argument that the College should adopt a mandatory Credit/No Credit (C/NC) grading policy for students in their first semester at the College. On April 3, faculty were informed about this argument, which will be a topic of discussion at the faculty meeting this afternoon.
This suggestion was based on similar policies at peer institutions, like Swarthmore, MIT, and Wellesley, where first-year students still receive letter grades on all course components, but receive “credit” or “no credit” designations on their official transcripts (i.e. shadow grading). The argument claims that grade-induced academic expectations are stressful and that students’ mental health and social relationships will improve under a C/NC system while keeping students’ long-term academic performance intact.
What proponents of the argument fail to realize is that adopting the policy could, in fact, result in significant academic harm, especially for students who do not come from elite academic backgrounds. Although there will not be a motion to adopt the policy at this afternoon’s meeting — the CEA brought this topic to the general faculty for discussion to build consensus on the “underlying value of the goals” — I think it is important to share my opinion here, because many students are not familiar with this argument and many professors who share my feelings are afraid to voice opposition due to the framing’s focus on mental health, grades, and minorities.
The argument claims that grades given in the first semester harm various marginalized groups. It asserts that “isolation, stress and a myopic focus on academics … are differentially demanding for marginalized students, whether based on their racial identity, class, sexual orientation or any otherness.” While I appreciate the empathy for marginalized groups, this framing stifles debate. Because the argument is framed as “reducing harm towards minorities,” professors and students opposed to the argument will be afraid of voicing concerns or offering arguments against it lest they be perceived as callous or bigoted.
In many respects, I was a marginalized student when I came from Brazil to study in the United States. My academic background can hardly be considered “elite”; I come from the Third World, where my mother did not even finish high school. I attended public schools, and I am intimately familiar with students from various cultures who have non-elite backgrounds.
To students like me and my friends, the cost of removing expectations, deadlines, and the incentive of grades was the loss of motivation to study. For instance, most of the courses I took during graduate school, a time when I already had basic knowledge of biology, were C/NC. As a result, I never focused on studying for exams or making sure I understood all of the material; instead I focused solely on aspects directly related to my area of research at the time. Without the immediate rewards or consequences of grades, many students will let distractions and other pressing activities get in the way of academics.
In fact, the argument admits students must either focus on “academics” or “developing a sense of self and community.” Take the rationale given for the move to C/NC: In the wake of instituting a similar shadow grading policy for first-years, Wellesley conducted a survey in which 45 percent of students said they were incentivized to spend more time “interacting with friends” and 40 percent said they were incentivized to spend more time “participating in recreational activities.” In other words, removing grades pleased the students because it allowed them to invest more time in their social systems.
For academically privileged students who already have good study habits, this increased leisure may not be harmful — in fact, the argument refers to this integration into social communities as healthy choices that promote mental health and academic success. However, students who are less academically prepared will lose precisely the incentives that will help them catch up with more prepared peers. The first semester in college is crucial because material builds up from previous study, and without a solid first base, it might be difficult to move on to advanced levels. As a result, I see every reason to expect that academic gaps between the more and less prepared students will be exacerbated by adopting the C/NC system.
In the absence of grades, I also suspect that professors will lose motivation to assess students rigorously. Under a C/NC system, shadow grades can be based on a simple completion of tasks, instead of numerical quantification of performance. While less grading would certainly save me many hours of onerous work, I also know that grading is an integral part of the purpose of college — to learn.
The argument also fails to mention that Johns Hopkins University removed its similar “satisfactory/unsatisfactory” policy for first-semester students after noticing that “covering grades can delay development of study skills and adaptation to college-level work” and that the “delay is particularly a concern for students in sequential courses, where the second-semester syllabus builds directly on first-semester work.” If we adopt a system of C/NC, I fear that the same problem would take place at Williams.
It is also hard to understand the justification for the C/NC given that, at the College, relatively few students struggle with poor grades and other academically related stresses: In 2019 our average grade point was about 3.52, and grade point averages at peer institutions like Harvard and Yale have continued to rise in recent years. Even worries about the permissibility of collaboration and group work do not cause the stress that they used to. I have noticed that many students have lost respect for the honor code, enforcement penalties for which have become less severe since the pandemic. Some students violate the rules by doing their take-home exams in groups, but very few professors bother with the hassle of bringing cases to the Honor and Discpline Committee.
Exempting first-year first semester grades from appearing on transcripts would be yet another step in abandoning academic rigor. This is precisely why many professors, including myself, voted to allow students to see their final grades before deciding to switch to Pass/Fail, which prevents students from prematurely disengaging.
Of the many professors at Swarthmore who I know personally, none of those to whom I have spoken see its first semester C/NC grading system as beneficial for students. Most view teaching first-years as frustrating due to the lack of student engagement. This raises the question about how evaluating the C/NC system would work. How will the data be collected? Whose opinions will count — those of students or professors? How will learning or lack thereof be quantified?
This argument is another well-intentioned but misguided attempt to improve the situation of marginalized students. While it’s important to have a balance between academics and social life, sacrificing the College’s primary mission of education for the sake of social activities and self-cultivation is myopic. Although many students may initially welcome the idea of reduced stress and academic obligations, a semester focused on socializing — with academics being a second priority — is likely to harm those with academic backgrounds that may not have prepared them for the College’s workload. Instead of representing a relief from stress, as the argument suggests, this initiative is likely to put these students even further behind their peers. In today’s faculty meeting and the discourse likely to follow, I urge the College community to reject this argument.
Luana Maroja is a professor of biology and chair of the biochemistry and molecular biology program at the College.
