Posted on 03/29/2025 5:10:50 AM PDT by Rummyfan
I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been awhile since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what they used to be. The problem with even talking about this topic at all is the knee-jerk response of, “yeah, just another old man complaining about the kids today, the same way everyone has since Gilgamesh. Shake your fist at the clouds, dude.”1 So yes, I’m ready to hear that. Go right ahead. Because people need to know.
First, some context. I teach at a regional public university in the US. Our students are average on just about any dimension you care to name—aspirations, intellect, socio-economic status, physical fitness. They wear hoodies and yoga pants and like Buffalo wings. They listen to Zach Bryan and Taylor Swift. That’s in no way a put-down: I firmly believe that the average citizen deserves a shot at a good education and even more importantly a shot at a good life. All I mean is that our students are representative; they’re neither the bottom of the academic barrel nor the cream off the top.
As with every college we get a range of students, and our best philosophy majors have gone on to earn PhDs or go to law school. We’re also an NCAA Division 2 school and I watched one of our graduates become an All-Pro lineman for the Saints. These are exceptions, and what I say here does not apply to every single student. But what I’m about to describe are the average students at Average State U.
(Excerpt) Read more at hilariusbookbinder.substack.com ...
The other kids in the class must have hated what she did to the curve.
My time with Skinner taught me to train white rats to put marbles in cans, dance in circles, and raise tiny rat-sized flags.
My dogs all won obedience ribbons too.
Doesn’t work well for children... the rats are held at 70% body weight.... can’t do that with kids. Lol
Your usual thoughtful essay.
Thanks
My goodness he is a fine bookbinder and fine furniture builder.
Click on hobbies on the drop down to see.
Of course, if most of them cannot read past what used to be called an 8th grade level, it goes without saying they'd be weak on history.
But they are REALLY weak on history. To the point where they cannot name the nations that made up the AXIS powers in WW2 (many will say Russia!). They cannot tell you anything about founding father Alexander Hamilton other than he is the subject of (a rather bad) musical on Broadway. They can't even discuss more recent US history like Watergate or the Vietnam War in an intelligent manner.
You are most welcome. I know a lot of what I write cannot be read by most people because it is too long. I write it primarily for myself, and since I have joined FR, I save things like that as text snippets on my computer. I have about three thousand of them, talking about everything from Monty Python to the workings of our electrical grid, and many experiences in my life scattered in. I use them for reference, and a reminder in case my memory starts to fail...:)
And once in a while, one of my fellow Freepers reads a lengthy post, and I connect with them. I enjoy this forum, for sure.
Oops! Too late!
I am starting a project. I don’t know how far I will get.
Oral history of my family and the times.
Good article. I spent 35 years teaching Financial Accounting and Business Computing. Almost half of incoming freshmen could not correctly answer this question: What is 38 percent of 100?
Then this one yielded about the same result: From your neighborhood, what direction is the Pacific ocean?
And finally, my favorite with a 30% error rate: True or False... Adam Smith must have written a book or something.
That was my first day quiz for college freshmen majoring in Business Management. I gave the same quiz every year for 15 years. Results went downhill from 2000 to 2015 when I retired.
My kids read all the books and wrote their own papers in college. And I did the same when I was a student.
But this professor is wrong if he thinks Gen-X (or Gen-Jones) college students were much better. Professors graded on a curve in those days, too. And many students didn’t read the whole book back then, either. Many students relied on Cliff Notes, and sometimes students asked other students to write their papers for them.
I’d argue that the professors were better back then.
Consider the article as an example. A professor of 30 years wrote it. He’s complaining that college students write at an 8th grade level, but his own writing skills are poor.
Some professors today are excellent. They know their subject, and their lectures are engaging. More importantly, they are organized. They rarely miss a class, and they give out grades on time.
But other professors are terrible. They might know their subject, but they shouldn’t be teaching.
I found out what happens in colleges today because my youngest kids lived at home while commuting to college. They never complained about a professor. In fact, their favorite professors were tough graders.
But, I made a few alarming observations about the other professors...
A few examples:
One professor never graded a test or assignment. She kept putting off the grading. The whole semester, the students had no idea whether they were passing or failing. At the end of the semester, she went on a trip and left all the student work with a TA to grade everything. Then, all the student work was tossed.
Some professors are tough graders who are strict with the students, but they repeatedly miss and cancel classes for their own personal reasons. Then, they drop tests and assignments from the schedule because they don’t have time to grade them.
Many professors teach at multiple colleges, but they hand out the same syllabus at each one. They don’t update it. So, often, students will receive a syllabus with the wrong college name, the wrong course name, the wrong course number, the wrong semester (and the wrong due dates), and sometimes a different text and assignments. And sometimes, it’s filled with typos. This happened, even when the syllabus was posted online.
College education is in a sorry state at all levels.
Wow....
I agree that a D grade would be the better option for students who have potential, but are not using it.
Nice...the older I get, the more enjoyable it is to remember!
Agreed
I am trying to figure out how to put it on the internet
“No more than ten to fifteen percent of graduating high school students are capable of doing meaningful college work.”
I suspect you are over estimating the achievement level of high school students. Check out this article. Not a single student is proficient in reading or math At 55 Chicago schools. The same thing is happening in most large cities where they are graduating illiterate and innumerate students.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/14/math-reading-chicago-schools-report/
“The first semester I taught college, I tried to give “D” grades to two students, and was called on the carpet by the Dean”
I used to use the D grade for the same reason. When I started in 1980 I never got any flak from administrators or parents. It’s pretty easy to justify failing grades in Financial Accounting. Correct and incorrect are absolute in most cases.
As the years went by, I saw more and more parents getting involved with failing or near failing grades. Once in a while the parent would kick their kid’s butt for slacking, but most had to be shown the exams, quizzes and attendance records along with the grading criteria.
I’m lucky to have retired just a little after every student had a smart phone and every classroom had WiFi. It was obvious they were going to wreck the classroom. I already had students sitting in the back with laptops, watching porn or gambling on poker sites. I was still able to get the phones put on silent at the beginning of every class without having to waste much time.
By the time I retired, 2/3 of the teachers were part-time lecturers, hired on a temporary basis for a single class. Some were good, but most were not prepared to handle the several unruly students in every classroom. They knew their subjects but could not teach.
That’s the idiocy I’m talking about, right there!
Yep
Yeah, that clip totally matches my own experience in kollege. I knew just about every character in that movie!
LOL!
Once in a while the parent would kick their kid’s butt for slacking, but most had to be shown the exams, quizzes and attendance records along with the grading criteria.
When a chid of mine did something unacceptable in prep school, I went to the dean of students and told hiim I was there to work out a "consequences and discipline" plan as a home and school team, and he almost fell out of his chair in shock...
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