Posted on 01/24/2023 9:50:45 AM PST by george76
As students recover from a ‘hangover from virtual high school,’ some Pittsburgh-area universities are responding with shorter tests and looser policies around attendance and deadlines.
Some instructors lower expectations for students’ mental health and as a response to generational differences, but others say that continuing remote learning habits does a disservice to students.
...
Recent interviews with students and instructors in the Pittsburgh area reveal that some colleges and universities responded to the pandemic by lowering expectations.
A PublicS ource article described a “hangover from virtual high school” at Point Park University, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), and other Pittsburgh universities.
Students experienced learning losses from virtual classes and, as Campus Reform has reported, declining mental health. To meet their needs, instructors are continuing the practices that students became accustomed to during high school–the same practices that make college classes such a struggle.
...
The interviewed professors reported that their students request flexibility in their assignments and have difficulty meeting deadlines and “stay[ing] on top of coursework” because teachers “actively helped” them in high school. One statistics professor said that he has to teach basic math skills to his students, according to PublicSource.
While some Pittsburgh professors have responded with extra tutoring sessions and supplemental modules, others are redesigning their courses.
“In the math department at Pitt, professor Jeffrey Wheeler has seen an ‘unsettling’ lack of engagement among students since the pandemic,” PublicSource reported. “Wheeler, who has taught math classes since the fall of 1990, said professors have shortened exams in the university’s freshman calculus classes as a result.”
Chatham University has yet to reinstate attendance and deadline policies that it dropped during the pandemic, with an associate dean citing mental health concerns such as “performance anxiety” to PublicSource.
Pittsburgh schools are not the only ones resolving the conflict between students’ expectations and those of their professors.
“More than 100” professors responded to a question from The Chronicle of Higher Education about student disengagement. Amidst “[s]tunning” disengagement, respondents reported “common challenges: Far fewer students show up to class. Those who do avoid speaking when possible. Many skip the readings or the homework. They have trouble remembering what they learned and struggle on tests.”
The solution to these problems is for professors to “reduce the demands,” according to an article by journalist and professor Becky Diamond in Psychology Today. School psychologist and consultant Rebecca Comizio told Diamond that, even before the pandemic, technological changes produced an “immediate-gratification, entertainment environment.”
For this reason, Comizio suggested, professors cannot expect the same motivation out of younger generations. “When we adjust our expectations, that’s not coddling,” she told Psychology Today. “That’s reality.”
Though Comizio and Diamond acknowledge generational differences, Jonathan Malesic, a professor at Southern Methodist University, pointed out other reasons as to why universities are catering to students’ preferences.
In an op-ed in The New York Times, Malesic argued that non-tenure track professors depend on student satisfaction in their evaluations. An article in EdSurge similarly observed an unspoken agreement between students and instructors, the “‘disengagement compact,’” in which students provide positive reviews in exchange for less work.
“It’s hard to insist on in-person attendance when colleagues are demanding flexibility,” Malesic wrote. “If students expect recorded lectures–even ones they won’t watch–then instructors will feel pressure to provide them.”
However, he argued that replicating remote learning to satisfy students is not doing them any favors. “The problem isn’t only that students learn poorly online,” Malesic continued. “It’s also that when they go through a year or more of remote classes, they develop habits that harm their ability to learn offline, too.”
Malesic contrasted universities that have lowered their expectations with the University of Dallas, which returned to in-person learning earlier than others. This Catholic university, as Campus Reform reported, is one of the faith-based institutions that experienced an increase in enrollment from students seeking the rigor of a classical education.
As students across the country struggle with pandemic-era math and reading losses, Malesic depicted students at the University of Dallas as thriving. He described attending a class where he watched students debate John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.
“Parsing out poetic meter is not everyone’s idea of a good time, but the students looked anything but bored,” Malesic wrote. “I didn’t want class to end.”
Defund and cancel “higher” edumacation.
Celebrate ignorance!
They could have just stopped after the first four words for the title.
Imagine a university that took a different approach. Imagine a university that announced that they had no quota or criteria for anything except excellence. You have to be above average to get in, and you have to be above average to graduate. No excuses. No one needs to “feel good” about anything. It’s all about hard work and dedication and anyone (student or faculty) who is disruptive about “higher causes” is escorted off campus within 24 hours.
Employers would eagerly hire graduates from such a school. And the best students in the country would want to attend.
Oregon students do not have to prove they can read, write, or do math at a basic high school level to get a diploma... because the teachers can not read, write, nor do math either.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3969771/posts
The dumbing down continues.
That’s OK, I encourage my kids to work, before or during, any higher level degrees/certifications they may choose.
Knowing how to work puts you in the top 10% right off the bat.
Harvard is a huge joke.. a glorified academic daycare where every student gets a trophy or, in this case, an A. The average GPA at Harvard is now 3.8 ... out of 4.0..
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4119999/posts
These schools are all about making money. They don’t care about standards or education. They will dumb down the curriculum in order to keep the admission roles up.
Dumbed-down grammar schools >> dumbed-down secondary schools >> dumbed-down colleges.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to party and to receive your everybody-gets-one degree.
Gonna be called “Blue State Syndrome”. Kids in these states are waaaayyy behind. This will take two generations to right the ship.
This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
What a waste. Schools don’t shiv a git anymore. They just want parents’ MONEY.
Universities are lowering expectations for pandemic-era students
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Well, Universities have certainly lowered my expectations for putting out rational students. Way too many of them seem like radicalized dolts to me.
Universities give us the money we stamp your diploma NEXT.
I was going to say universities with lowered expectations won’t be graduating any engineers, scientists or math majors, but AI may make that inconsequential.
Columbia University permanently drops SAT, ACT admissions requirement!:
‘Standardized testing is not a required component of our application,’ the school wrote in an announcement released Wednesday
MEDIA Published March 3, 2023 7:26pm EST
https://www.foxnews.com/media/columbia-university-permanently-drops-sat-act-admissions-requirement
Bridges will collapse, airlines will crash, and there will be thousands of industrial accidents a couple of decades from now—and the investigators will be clueless....
“We may never know what happened”....
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