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 current generation cannot rightly judge the past generation until the current generation can be judged by the future generation” L.Star
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Ping to a fascinating article.
I know it's not about public school shenanigans per se, but it does reveal the fruit of public education. My mostly homeschooled kids (they did public high school for a couple years having run out of 12th grade curriculum to use) excelled at college and some of their profs were so impressed with their writing ability, they use their papers (anonymously) as examples of of good writing for the class, examples of what the professors were looking for.
And all my kids loved to read. I don't know if they still do, but that's their choice. But as kids, they read a lot.
Homeschooling allows you to ensure your kids understand the subject material before moving on, (where I got very lost in math in 7th grade). and allows you to better control their screen time which absolutely has a deleterious effect on the brain.
Agreed.
It would be interesting to hear the perspective of someone in the sciences or math. Or even English.
Decades ago I reinitiated contact with my English 101 professor. That was maybe 10 years after I graduated. He said, rather out of the blue, that the quality of incoming students was on the decline. I am inclined to blame public schools.
A good education, however, requires curiosity on the part of student and zeal on the part of the teacher. Impossible to teach if one or the other has no interest.
I think we just push far too many young people into college, The percentage of truly educated graduates (who are usually autodidacts) has probably gone down only slightly in a hundred years. But the number of people walking around with bachelor’s degrees today who would have qualified for little better than itinerant labor back then is much, much higher.
The only class I thoroughly hated in college was a history class taught by a very nasty, snarky Christian hating prof, which I found out after I signed up. But the options for finding a class that fit in my core classes schedule were very few so I toughed it out.
I passed. But it did take down my GPA which was very good in my core classes.
30 year college professor here in STEM.
The author accurately describes what is going on, and your point is a good one as well.
Even at the “elite” universities, there has been a significant decline in quality of students though. Not s steep as the decline at the “average” schools, but the problem is real.
U.S. students overall are poorly educated and unmotivated to really do anything about it.
Yes, I’d like to see the acceptance rates at his school. I’ll bet it’s 80+ percent acceptance. So, he’s getting a lot of kids who wouldn’t have been there in the past. What has changed is the school. Its dollar-hungry administrators want to increase enrollment at all costs, which waters down the intellectual level of the student body. There are no such things as weed-out courses anymore. That will get the faculty and program penalized.
Ok, I’ll bite. You sideswiped psychology in college because you had to get a minor in something outside the sciences. Fair enough. I sideswiped psychology in college for slightly different reasons, and I certainly didn’t get anywhere near to picking up a minor in it, but I also had a brief intro to B.F. Skinner.
Why, out of everything in psychology, did you find Skinner useful? The only useful thing about Skinner as far as I can see is that he is a towering example of the utter dead end of strictly reductionist, materialist thinking. In that sense, he is useful, as a boundary marker.
What did you find useful about B.F. Skinner?
I am still intrigued by — and sometimes use as an example — one thing that Skinner wrote. This had to do with a test of his hypothesis, and the facts that he felt the need for such a test, that he proposed a pretty good one, and confessed the inadequacy of his answer all suggested to me that Skinner was intellectually honest, fair minded, and probably a very good teacher, albeit wrong a fundamental things. But that’s a long digression. What did a science nerd like you find useful about Skinner?
I do find some of the work being doing by social psychologists — the saving remnant who are still critical thinkers and willing to challenge the reigning academic dogmas — very useful. A scattering of clinical psychologists are also sane. Jordan Peterson is a good example. I recall one hilarious comment that he made in his Oxford Union talk when he shared something that ran counter to the orthodoxy about gender differences that was presumably held by most of the students there: “And don’t think this [statement of research findings] is the product of some right wing psychologists. All the right wing psychologists in the world are right here, in this room, in this chair....” That elicited the intended laugh, because most Oxford students aren’t stupid. Peterson was pointing to something that most competent people in the field acknowledge, because the research findings are robust whatever the researchers’ political stances, and they undermine the current LeftWorld cant. The question is whether people in psychology are prepared to connect the dots, or whether they just avert their eyes and shuffle off to something else because it involves tribal taboos that could be career ending if voiced.
Whats a parent? The first iPhone was invented in 2007. So you have the typical college freshman who grew up on iPhone/iPad their entire lives.
Now they're expected to listen to a lecture in a classroom at an University?
Obviously, there should be laws limiting the amount of screen time.
I was in a bar having a burger and a beer and watched two young women, looked to be late teens or early 20 sit and eat an entire lunch without a single word between them but they were constantly keying into their "phones".
I'd bet my last buck that most of the texting was between the two of them, and never a single word.
Agree. No more than ten to fifteen percent of graduating high school students are capable of doing meaningful college work.
“ They truly believe that the world’s richest man is in this just so he can steal Grandma’s social security check.”
If “they” means the low information voter that the leftist media and elite have taught this, the above statement is true. If, however, “they” means Democrats in high political office and high positions in the legacy media, I do not think that they believe it for a minute. They know they are lying to their low information and maybe low intellect constituents. Everything about leftism is about lying.
Harvard is starting a remedial math program because so many of their students are unprepared.
If 60 is the new 40 then 35 must be the new 15.
Part of the problem is potential hiring companies not asking for letters of recommendation from advising/counseling profs. Similar to not vetting applicants simply to see if they actually went to the college they claimed.
But, that is HR, and they are lazy/woke shittes.
“Don’t pay attention and work in my class, no recommendation for you. And, if asked I will tell the truth just like I wrote out in your semester evaluation.”
Let’s try putting the blame where it rightfully belongs.
Kid’s are not stupid, for there are not many stupid people.
Kid’s today are UNEDUCATED.
President Trump is attacking the source of this...
The department of education (not capitalized on purpose)
You can blame the DoE.
But where are thr parents whose stood by for decades and allowed Deep State to do this to their children?
Parents permitted this.
They should be held responsible right along with Deep State.
“If 60 is the new 40 then 35 must be the new 15.”
Absolutely! We are living longer by spending more time in adolescence. Not having to work or compete in the real world has extended the passage into adulthood. Society is suffering because of this.
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