Julia McKenna, a senior at the University of Notre Dame, used to stress out over grades. Then she took four “ungraded” courses that didn’t use them.

“The real world isn’t graded. Grades don’t take into account your work ethic, challenging semesters, mental health or growth,” Ms. McKenna told The Washington Times.

The 21-year-old sociology major supports a growing trend in higher education of professors giving evaluative feedback rather than A through F grades, especially to first-year undergraduate and graduate students.

Advocates of the method, also called “un-grading” or “alternative assessment,” blame letter grades for making freshmen anxious, perpetuating racism against minority students and increasing dropout rates.

Others say the push to kill grades — which has exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered campuses in March 2020 — reflects the desperation of colleges to stop losing students.

“College enrollments are falling and schools have enormous expenses that cannot be reduced in the short run, so they are having what in retail is called a ‘first sale,’” said Robert Weissberg, a retired University of Illinois political scientist and expert on pedagogy. “Instead of 75% off, they are saying, ‘Come to our school, have fun and don’t worry about grades.’ Next, there will be a ‘going-out-of-business sale’ with diplomas sold for ‘only a dollar’ each.”

Some mental health experts warn that eliminating grades could worsen the emotional struggles of students who reported increased anxiety and depression during pandemic lockdowns. That could happen by reinforcing their belief that they aren’t strong enough to handle the academic standards their parents faced.

And the experts note that ending grades won’t stop young people from comparing themselves to each other on social media.

Stress can “optimize performance” and is not harmful mentally or physically at tolerable levels, said Dr. John V. Campo, a pediatric psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

“There is a risk of setting the bar too low and selling young people short,” Dr. Campo said. “It strikes me as a bit misguided to target grades and academic stress as the primary source of any perceived increase in reported emotional distress in youth and young adults, as the challenges have been longstanding across generations.”

While most colleges require a letter grade at the end of the semester, three methods of “un-grading” all coursework have become popular among professors:

‘Ungrading’

Susan D. Blum, a Notre Dame anthropologist who uses the third method, hasn’t given a letter grade on a paper in seven years.

She said she overrides two final grades out of an average of 50-60 students each semester: one grade ends up higher than a student wanted, one ends up lower and the other students get the semester grades they say they deserve.

“They’re honest with me. They’re not all As,” Ms. Blum said in an interview. “It is not easier, it’s just better. When you introduce high tension, it makes people freeze and they can’t do things they otherwise do.”

Ms. Blum stopped assigning grades after watching how people learned crafts, sports, music and hobbies outside the classroom. She compared those observations to her experience that students ignored her feedback when she added a letter grade to assignments.

In 2020, she published the book “Ungrading” on her findings. Since then, she says she has given more than 70 talks, podcasts, book talks and presentations about the topic — up from 15 talks she gave from 2017 to 2020.

According to her book, nine institutions were entirely grade free for four-year undergraduate students in 2019: Hampshire College, Evergreen State College, Deep Spring College, New College of Florida, Alverno College, Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University, Prescott College, Antioch University and Goddard College.

In addition, three colleges offered undergraduates options for alternative assessments — Sarah Lawrence College, Reed College and Brown University — and 96 medical schools gave only “pass-fail” grades in pre-clinical science courses during the first two years.

Throughout higher education, surging applications from first-generation and international students have offset enrollment declines over the past three years — and anti-grading activists say those students struggle the most with grades.

Schools should prioritize students’ mental health over academic competition, said un-grading advocate Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, a physician and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“We would never ask an athlete to compete if they had an injury and the same goes for mental health,” said Dr. Galiatsatos, who serves as health equity lead in the school’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity.

Fragile students

Medical schools and law schools did not always assign grades. Students taught themselves and either passed or failed a standardized examination admitting them to practice many decades ago.

Schools once judged excellence in other subjects like rhetoric and mathematics based on one’s ability to impress others in public debates, lectures and oral examinations at the end of a course of studies.

As more adults sought degrees in the late 1800s, Mount Holyoke College became the first campus in the U.S. to assign letter grades as a way of measuring student progress. That system became standardized nationwide in the 20th century.

“Grades are the simplest and most convenient way for teachers to tell students how much of a subject they have successfully learned,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University. “Without grades, students have to rely on their own guesses and on the teachers’ verbal assurances, which inevitably reflect personal sensitivities.”

Even as grading became widespread, colleges experimented with alternatives starting in the late 1960s, sometimes dropping and reinstating letter grades.

Since the start of the pandemic, more academic officials have met to discuss ways to eliminate letter grades more widely in response to heightened student stress.

In March, the University of California Board of Regents Academic and Student Affairs Committee reviewed a report that said traditional grading methods could perpetuate bias against some racial and linguistic minorities. It encouraged schools to explore alternative grading.

Professors have recently flocked to online anti-grading forums at Texas Christian University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Grand Valley State University, the University of New Hampshire, the University of South Alabama, Colorado College and several community colleges.

Professors at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital, say they are now using labor-based and specification-based grading, among other non-traditional methods. The majority-Black school hosted a panel discussion on ungrading at a staff meeting last year, and now offers alternative assessments in some English classes.

“Overall, I find removing grades is a way to significantly reduce the stress associated with school,” said Keith W.  Mathias, a PGCC English professor. “Giving students the space to prioritize their physical and mental health allows them to focus on their learning.”

But other academics say killing grades is a temporary fix for student anxiety and could leave students unprepared for real-world stress after college.

“As a college professor for over 30 years, I can certainly see the downside of traditional grading among today’s youth, who are much more fragile when it comes to anxiety, depression, and other mental health-related issues,” said clinical psychologist Thomas Plante, a professor at Santa Clara University.

A member of the American Psychological Association, Mr. Plante said online classes during the pandemic inspired him to implement a contract-based system in which he gives an A to students who complete a list of tasks on schedule.

But the cons can include students working less, learning less and not challenging themselves when they need to be building resilience and solid coping skills for the real world, he said.

“This includes facing your fears and anxiety in a thoughtful way,” Mr. Plante said. “We do the opposite when we allow students to avoid anything that stresses them.”

According to some conservatives, colleges have already gone too far in coddling students, creating a generation of “snowflakes” raised on participation trophies. They say the problem with “everyone gets an A” is that it tells students nothing about their strengths and weaknesses.

“Grades, like democracy, are the worst system of academic evaluation, except for all the others,” said Wilfred McClay, a historian at Hillsdale College in Michigan. “Without grades, students have only the vaguest idea of how they are doing.”

• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.