What if there were no grades?

Abstract The role of grades in shaping students’ futures has intensified in ‘metric societies’ where human lives are increasingly rendered into numbers, scores, metrics, and rankings. It is almost impossible to imagine university education without grades, and indeed, gradeless programs remain at the margins of higher education. This study asks university students to imagine the unimaginable: what if there were no grades? Through an innovative approach of ‘removal as a method’, this study theoris