Have We Lost the Plot? What Students Lose When Colleges Coddle Them

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Imagine a game with multiple outcomes. The players know that if they move left, all will be lost. If they move to the center, the majority will suffer, but some will prevail. If they move right, they do the other players a huge service; maybe not everyone wins, but the majority will be okay.

Now imagine we are playing that game, but half the players insist on going left despite the warnings. That is what we are doing with students in education today. The University of Michigan recently announced that, beginning in fall 2027, incoming freshmen in its College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will receive pass or no-credit marks on their external transcripts instead of traditional letter grades during their first semester. Students will still receive grades and instructor feedback, but those grades will not affect their GPAs or appear on external transcripts. The university will retain them internally for advising, scholarships, and other administrative purposes (University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, 2026). I understand the thought behind this, and MIT uses a similar approach (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Registrar, n.d.). But when it came up in a recent NPR article, I couldn’t stop thinking about it (Fadel & Al-Waheidi, 2026).

We know enough to recognize the pattern. Have we forgotten the adage, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”?* We have the popular-press books making the case: The Coddling of the American Mind (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018), The Anxious Generation (Haidt, 2024), and Suicidal Empathy (Saad, 2026). All three name the same danger: removing challenges, shielding feelings from every hurt, and raising a generation without resilience. Yet the prevailing narrative for so many institutions is still to avoid discomfort at all costs.

I do not say any of this to wave away the mental health crisis on college campuses. It is real, and I have lived a version of it myself. I have struggled with anxiety most of my life, and I was, by my own admission, coddled as a child. But it was not the coddling that taught me how to live well. What shaped me were the moments I could not avoid something hard and had to build the fortitude to get through it anyway. In fact, those are some of my happiest and proudest moments: graduating college, giving birth multiple times, standing up for myself when it would be easier to hide, and learning statistics at age 39 to complete my dissertation without assistance from a statistician. Shielding a young person from difficulty does not treat anxiety. It just delays the moment that person must learn how to carry it.

This is not an abstract policy debate for me. I see a version of the same instinct every day in my own classroom. As a teacher and professor, I love** my students. I love pouring into the next generation of leaders, whether through leadership lectures at the local high school or by teaching doctoral students in our principal preparation program. In my role as a post-master’s faculty member, I interact daily with students who are high achievers; they have made it through undergraduate and master’s programs and feel ready for a doctorate. Yet somewhere along the way, a small margin of them never learned how to write at the college level or follow instructions. It gives me pause. Were they not graded with care during English 101? Or did they simply ignore the correction they were given? I cannot fathom how someone makes it through undergraduate work, let alone a master’s program, without learning to communicate clearly. And yet they did.

When they receive anything under 95%, they reach out to challenge it or find out what they did wrong. Ironically, I give thorough feedback, trying to strike the balance between being a helpful teacher and not holding any hands. Typically, they panic and do not read the feedback itself. Once they have heard and understood where they missed the mark, though, they see the reasonableness behind it. I remind them from our very first meeting that although many will remain practitioners in the schoolhouse, they can still work toward becoming scholars in our program. I would be doing a disservice to them and to the colleagues who will teach them in later courses if I did not stop and help them course correct. It could seem “nice,” or even “kind,” to hand out 100% grades, but the reality is that it would be very unloving.

Like many people who have chosen education as a vocation, I do not want to see my students fail. I want to encourage them toward betterment through honest feedback, and that kind of feedback takes time and courage on the professor’s part. When I was in high school, if my English teacher had not corrected my errors, I would not have known what I was doing wrong, and I would not have had the chance to hone my skills.

Christian educators must distinguish between sparing their students discomfort and willing their good. Yes, sometimes it hurts to see a “C,” or even an “89,” on an assignment. Honest evaluation may sting, but when it is accurate, proportionate, and accompanied by meaningful guidance, it is an act of love. Education should cultivate growth, and that growth affects the whole student: not only the intellect, but the interior life as well. A student who earns a D should have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to confront it, rally, and improve. A student who earns an A should know that disciplined effort matters.

Every generation of educators has unique challenges. For this generation, we must model fortitude. We must remember the good, the true, and the beautiful as we teach, and that the avoidance of discomfort or correction is not true love as God intends.

Our students have their own challenges. In a culture increasingly tempted to confuse empathy with the removal of every discomfort, they must learn they can face uncomfortable feelings. To accept the F. Or the C. Or the low A. To accept it, learn from it, and listen to their teachers and professors—even when the grade affects the record. Move right, not left, because the alternative puts humility, resilience, and growth at risk.

* This saying is often misattributed to Albert Einstein. Its roots trace instead to Narcotics Anonymous recovery literature and Rita Mae Brown’s 1983 novel Sudden Death (Brown, 1983).

** Love, or true Christian charity, is to will the good of the other.

References

Brown, R. M. (1983). Sudden death. Bantam Books.

Fadel, L., & Al-Waheidi, M. (2026, August 12). University of Michigan won’t use letter grades for some freshmen next fall. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/12/nx-s1-5928197/university-michigan-freshmen-letter-grades-pilot-fall-2027

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.

Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2018). The coddling of the American mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. Penguin Press.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Registrar. (n.d.). First year grading. https://registrar.mit.edu/classes-grades-evaluations/grades/grading-policies/first-year-grading

Saad, G. (2026). Suicidal empathy: Dying to be kind. Broadside Books.

University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. (2026). LSA first-semester grade covering pilot program. https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/academics/lsa-first-semester-grade-covering-pilot-program.html