Students take an exam at York University in Toronto in December, 2025.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Rhonda N. McEwen is president and vice-chancellor of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.
As university and college exam season begins and campuses fill with tension, it is hard not to recall an earlier childhood feeling: the walk home with a report card in your backpack, the quiet calculation before you opened it, the mix of anticipation and dread. For many, it felt as though a few letters on a page defined what was possible. That reaction does not disappear at university; it intensifies.
Now imagine feeling that way for an entire year. That is what we ask of first-year students, placing them almost immediately into a system where performance is measured, ranked and recorded in ways that shape their futures.
Within weeks of arriving on campus, many students stop asking what they want to learn and start asking what is safe to take. For first-year science students with ambitions for medical school or other competitive programs after undergrad, the calculation is stark. Admissions reward near-perfect GPAs, so students respond rationally by avoiding courses where grading feels subjective, such as humanities, English literature, philosophy and history, even if these subjects interest them.
Canada’s university partnership with India shows its soft-power potential
Our grading system trains students to avoid risk and, in the process, narrows the very idea of a university education. When every assignment carries long-term consequences, curiosity gives way to strategy. Students choose what is predictable rather than what is challenging, and over time this fosters a culture of risk aversion.
That has consequences far beyond the classroom. Economies depend on people willing to test ideas, cross disciplines and take informed risks. If we train students to avoid uncertainty, we should not be surprised when entrepreneurial ambition narrows, innovation slows and productivity suffers.
First-year grades also penalize students during a transformational period when they adapt to new academic expectations, new social environments and, often, living independently for the first time. Yet we attach high-stakes grades to this moment and treat them as reliable indicators of long-term potential.
Scrapping grades in favour of a pass-fail first year would let students explore fully. In his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein argues that people who draw on diverse fields, including scientists leaning into humanities and the arts, are better problem-solvers and more innovative thinkers. In medicine, the ability to interpret narratives, grapple with ambiguity and communicate with creativity is central to good care. Yet our grading system pushes students away from attaining these skills.
University of Waterloo’s next president returns to his academic roots
Other jurisdictions are already rethinking this approach. In Britain, programs, including the University of Birmingham Law School, have adopted models where first-year grades do not count toward final degree classification. The aim is not to lower standards, but to give students space to develop habits and confidence for deeper learning. In Canada, we continue to take the opposite approach.
First-year grades often measure adaptation as much as ability. Students arrive with uneven preparation, and some take longer to find their footing. A difficult term can leave a lasting mark on a transcript, even as a student goes on to excel.
A pass-fail first year offers a different model. Standards would remain rigorous and feedback detailed, but the emphasis would shift from ranking students to supporting development. Freed from GPA pressure, students could make different choices and have room to struggle and recover, which is how durable learning is built.
Grading can feel inevitable, but letter grades were not widely adopted in North American universities until the mid-20th century.
As Susan D. Blum argues in Ungrading, a fixation on grades can lead to cheating, heightened competition between students and an undue emphasis on racking up points over genuine learning. Given that most elite medical schools already use pass-fail grades for pre-clinical courses, the premise that first-year undergrad courses require numerical grades is increasingly hard to sustain.
In the coming weeks, exams will give way to convocation, where we recognize what students have achieved. It is worth asking whether our system has supported that achievement or simply measured it too early and too narrowly.
Universities exist to expand minds, not to constrain them. It is time to stop treating first year as a sorting mechanism and start treating it as an education, beginning with making it pass-fail.