College should be tough. Michigan’s grade plan coddles students
It’s been more than 20 years, but I can still feel the shock of seeing the letter “F” on my first college English test.
It was a serious blow to my pride. Worse, it threatened the scholarships I needed to afford college, as they depended on a solid GPA.
I was a freshman at Hillsdale College, a liberal arts school in Michigan, and English had always been my strongest subject. I felt confident about my abilities.
When I showed up later that day in my professor’s office (yes, I cried), I discovered that I had completely missed an important page of the exam. Rather than let me redo the test, he kindly yet firmly told me I had plenty of time to make up for the bad grade.
And I did. While devastating at the time, this was an integral learning experience for me.
Skip to the present. At the University of Michigan, just down the road, administrators in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts don’t think their freshman students can handle the hard truth of a bad grade.
