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COVID changed college grading in two connected ways: classes and assessments moved online with little warning, while colleges loosened rules so students could switch to pass/fail, credit/no-credit, withdrawal or incomplete marks. The result was not a universal rise or fall in grades. Outcomes depended on course design, delivery mode, student circumstances and the policy used to record performance.
A randomized study at West Point found that online students earned lower final grades, particularly those already at academic risk. A separate Texas A&M analysis found class GPAs rose during the first pandemic semester and remained above their pre-pandemic trend for two more semesters. Both findings can be true because learning conditions and grading standards changed at the same time.
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What changed when campuses closed
In March 2020, colleges had to replace in-person teaching almost immediately. Lectures, office hours, exams and group work moved online, often before instructors had redesigned them for remote delivery. At the same time, academic committees created temporary ways to prevent one disrupted term from permanently damaging a student’s record.
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Many colleges first recorded the letter grade a student earned, then allowed the student to convert it later to pass/fail or credit/no-credit. Other options included retroactive withdrawal and an incomplete when illness, technology failures, caregiving or other disruptions prevented completion. The details and deadlines varied by institution.
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Lafayette College’s spring 2020 policy captures the equity rationale. Its Academic Progress Committee and Curriculum and Education Policy Committee wrote that the objective was to make evaluation “more flexible this semester so that it equitably takes into account the diverse academic needs, interests, and concerns of our students and the very different pedagogies being employed for the balance of this academic year.”
Why the evidence shows grades moving in opposite directions
Online delivery lowered grades in a randomized test
Kofoed, Gebhart, Gilmore and Moschitto randomized 551 West Point students in fall 2020 to online or in-person sections of a required economics course. Students assigned to online sections finished with grades 0.215 standard deviations lower. The largest declines occurred among academically at-risk students. Surveys linked the experience to concentration problems and weaker connections with instructors and classmates.
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The design gives unusually strong evidence about a delivery-mode effect, but its scope is narrow: one course at one highly selective institution. It should not be treated as a national estimate for every major or college.
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Class GPAs rose at Texas A&M
Tillinghast, Mjelde and Yeritsyan examined 7,852 undergraduate classes in Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture from fall 2010 through spring 2021. Average class GPA increased by 0.22 points in spring 2020 and by about 0.18 points in each of the following two semesters.
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The study does not establish one cause. Easier or differently supervised assessments, changed grading standards, emergency flexibility and changes in students’ lives could all have contributed. A higher recorded GPA therefore does not necessarily mean students learned more, just as a lower grade in a remote class does not isolate every factor affecting performance.
Who used pass/fail options
Flexible grading was not used evenly across the student population. Rodríguez-Planas analyzed more than 11,000 academic records from spring 2017 through spring 2020 and found that lower-income students were 35% more likely than higher-income students to choose pass/fail. The analysis found that flexible grading accounted for the income-group difference in observed spring 2020 performance, a warning that raw GPA comparisons can be misleading when students have different grading choices.
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Kelly and Swidler’s longitudinal study of Lafayette records found higher pass/fail take-up among Black, Latino, international and lower-GPA students, as well as among seniors. The senior pattern included a “check out” effect: students close to graduation sometimes had less reason to preserve a high letter grade when a passing mark was enough to finish.
These patterns explain why colleges described the policies as equity measures. Students differed sharply in access to quiet study space, reliable internet, health care, paid work, caregiving time and a stable place to live. A common grading rule could therefore impose very different costs.
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What happened after the emergency semester
Some effects extended beyond spring 2020. A study using administrative records for bachelor’s students from 2014/15 through 2022/23 reports that lenient grading offset part of the pandemic’s negative effect for low-ability students. By helping them pass compulsory exams and continue, the policy changed persistence outcomes as well as the marks recorded for individual courses.
That finding does not mean one national grading regime persisted. Colleges ended, narrowed or redesigned their emergency rules on different schedules, and there is no single national 2026 census showing which institutions still retain COVID-era accommodations.
How the main grading models differ
| Model | What the transcript records | Learning measurement | Equity and incentives | Durability questions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Letter grade | A ranked symbol such as A–F, usually contributing to GPA | Provides more detail about relative performance, but can combine mastery with attendance, timing and test conditions | Preserves familiar incentives and comparability, yet exposes students to unequal health, work and technology burdens | Established administrative practice; assessment integrity still depends on course design |
| Pass/fail or credit/no-credit | A threshold mark without the usual GPA points | Shows completion above a standard, not how far above it a student performed | Can insure against a disrupted term and reduce pressure; students may study differently when fine grade distinctions no longer count | Admissions, scholarships, transfer offices and employers may interpret a pass differently, so local rules matter |
| Ungrading | Narrative feedback or a final evaluation rather than conventional points | Emphasizes feedback and revision over a single numerical judgment | May reduce competition, but requires students to understand expectations without familiar score signals | Needs substantial faculty agreement and consistent record-keeping |
| Contract grading | A grade tied to completing an agreed set of tasks | Measures demonstrated work against a contract rather than ranking students against one another | Makes requirements explicit and can accommodate different paths; poor contract design can reward completion without deep mastery | Contracts must be understandable, enforceable and compatible with institutional policies |
| Standards-based grading | Separate judgments against defined learning standards | Shows which outcomes a student has mastered and where further work is needed | Can make expectations clearer and support reassessment; creating reliable standards takes time | Requires shared rubrics and faculty calibration across sections |
| Labor-based grading | Credit linked to documented effort or workload under stated rules | Measures labor conditions more than subject-matter mastery unless paired with quality checks | Can recognize unequal time and life constraints, but may weaken the signal about what a graduate knows | Institutions must decide how the mark should be read outside the course |
What changed in assessment practice
Remote exams exposed a basic integrity problem: a timed, closed-book test is difficult to supervise fairly when students are scattered across homes, time zones and unequal technology. Many instructors therefore had to choose between imperfect online proctoring and assessments built around open-book questions, projects, drafts, presentations or other evidence of reasoning.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchThe emergency also gave wider visibility to ungrading, contract grading, standards-based grading and labor-based grading. These approaches are not interchangeable. The first emphasizes feedback, the second an agreed workload, the third explicit learning outcomes and the fourth documented labor. Their common lesson is that a transcript is only as meaningful as the evidence and standards behind the mark.
How to interpret a pandemic-era transcript
- Check the college’s policy for the specific term. A pass may have replaced a letter grade, and an incomplete or withdrawal may have different consequences.
- Read the transcript together with course context. A GPA from a term of remote exams and altered deadlines is not automatically comparable with a GPA from a conventional term.
- Look for the student’s demonstrated outcomes, projects or later coursework when a pass/fail mark hides performance detail.
- For admissions, transfer or scholarship decisions, verify how the receiving institution treats pass/fail and pandemic-era exceptions rather than assuming a universal rule.
What the evidence does—and does not—show
The strongest available studies point to a conditional conclusion. Remote delivery could depress grades, especially for students already vulnerable academically. Flexible policies could raise recorded GPAs, protect progression and absorb unequal disruption. Neither result alone measures learning quality, and institution-specific evidence cannot establish one nationwide pandemic GPA effect.
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