Offering safe passage: grading systems and gendered enrollment patterns in undergraduate mathematics

Abstract

While copious research documents that early grades in college are fateful for persistence in STEM fields, social scientists have seldom considered how grading systems themselves might influence STEM progress. Drawing on university-wide transcript data and longitudinal interview data from a cohort of undergraduates moving through an elite university, I show that a university-wide transition from A–F to pass/fail grades during the COVID-19 pandemic substantially influenced student decisions to enroll in mathematics courses. Female-identified students from minoritized ethno-racial groups were substantially more likely to enroll in their first math courses than demographically similar students in prior years. Interviews reveal that pass/fail grades gave these students a sense of safety with a subject they perceived as difficult. Integrating these findings with insights from the sociology of quantification, I theorize that grading systems—the specific scales used to assign final course grades (e.g., A–F grading or pass/fail)—may have independent effects on demographic segmentation and stratification in undergraduate education.