You may have seen the news at the start of this academic year that the University of Michigan has decided to withhold grades from some members of the incoming first-year class to support their transition and mental health (Arsenault, 2026).
On the face of it, this might not be a terrible idea. The transition to college from high school is a challenging one. We all know that college-level work is very different from that at most high schools, on top of the critical shifts in identity development as Gomes et al. (2026) and others have noted, as well as challenges of increased freedom, access to people and situations that can be detrimental to one’s well-being, and the overwhelming need to prove oneself. We know that we have a mental health crisis in this country among young people (Mowreader, 2025). Any effort to support their wellbeing should be applauded.
That said, college students have spent the previous 12-plus years in institutions that presumably evaluated their daily and weekly performance using grades. They are experienced with this aspect of the educational process. Certainly, getting an A in college is and should be harder than in high school. Hiding or removing a piece of that evaluative experience doesn’t make the work any less challenging; it simply removes a critical piece of clarity from the equation.
In fact, in my work with young professionals, I often hear that one of the biggest challenges with the transition from college to work and life after college is that they stop receiving grades. They don’t know what A-level work looks like in the workplace or in life. They don’t know how to manage their time and productivity with projects that have no endpoint and don’t come with a syllabus and a grading rubric. The academic structure might be stressful and imperfect, but it is, in fact, all they know.
The bigger point is this: Why do we have this urgency to make everything easier? College is supposed to be hard. Learning is supposed to challenge you. And while, yes, there are aspects of our lives that we should be making easier—access to food, clean drinking water, a sustainable lifestyle, just to name a few—these aren’t what our society is focused on. Instead, it’s about increasing productivity and maximizing time.
We should make access to learning assistance and counseling support in college easier. We should also require people to write their own emails and papers, and learn how to do research and how to show up in relationship with others.
We are being inundated with AI tools, strategies, and yes, way too much slop, in the name of efficiency and productivity. But what happens when, in the process, we lose the essential tools that make us both human and of use?
As Slater (2026) notes, regarding the impact AI is having on entry-level jobs:
Every role that AI absorbs is one that a junior employee would once have learned by doing. The efficiency gain and the training loss are the same decision, viewed from different angles.
The consequences for white-collar professions are already visible. Entry-level hiring at major technology companies has fallen more than 50 percent below pre-pandemic levels. Generative AI doesn’t eliminate entire occupations overnight. Instead, it hollows them out from within, automating 30 or 40 per cent of an employee’s workload, leaving fewer entry-level roles and compressing opportunities for career progression. The result is organisations that get more done with fewer people today, but have fewer ways to train the people they will need tomorrow. This creates a widening gap not just between companies but within them, between a shrinking cadre of AI-fluent senior professionals and a growing population of graduates who cannot get a foot on the ladder that those seniors once climbed.
In our eagerness to “get ahead,” we may soon discover that we have fallen behind to a point from which we cannot recover.
What’s the Alternative?
In this moment, it would behoove us all to consider how we might step away from the easy button. In its simplest form, this means not making the internet the first source of information, scrolling past AI-generated summaries to the source documents, and then taking the time to critically assess the truth of what you are reading. And to do that, you have to have the critical thinking and analysis skills that a rigorous education provides.
The skills this moment needs are those that make us uniquely human: relationship-building, interpersonal communication, critical assessment, and the ability to reflect and learn. This is why asking for and providing more feedback, not less—to our students, to each other—is so important. Feedback gives us the information we need so we can keep progressing as students, as professionals, and as humans. It is one of the most important learning and relationship-building tools we possess, and no technology is required to deploy it.
Education has always been about scaffolding skills. We learn to solve the easy problems first, so we have the tools to solve the more difficult ones later. This is true for education, for work, and for life. Removing those early steps rarely results in a better product or a better person. And so, sure, hiding student grades might have the impact of easing the transition into college. And, it might make those students less able to handle greater disappointments or challenges down the road, just as removing entry-level jobs now may result in a less functional workforce later.
In August, MIT released its assessment on the state of AI on their campus, which uncovered some familiar and concerning findings, including that there is a pervasive lack of clarity on AI’s ethical use, the technology is increasing social isolation, and the technology is challenging traditional modes of assessment (Massachusetts, 2026). Anyone working on a college campus is likely nodding along with familiarity. It’s a messy world we’re living in, with no clear direction forward for students or those who would guide them.
The study recommends a set of actions for its campus, including reevaluating the assessment process: “Rather than simply “AI-proof” current methods of assessment, instructors need to revisit what they really want students to know and devise assessments that foster, or even include, the kind of productive struggle that builds durable understanding and mastery.”
That, I think, is the key piece to all this innovation and disruption that is getting lost in the noise. Building our humanity is not about removing obstacles on our paths. It’s about learning how to move beyond the obstacles when they inevitably appear. There is, indeed, productive value in the struggle.