Do you have a teen going to college soon? If so, you may want to check out Iain Murray’s new book entitled Stealing You Blind: How Government Fat Cats Are Getting Rich Off of You.
A recent survey of more than 30,000 first year students revealed that nearly half were spending more hours drinking than they were studying. Researchers from the University of Californina, Irvine found that a third of students surveyed expected B’s just for attending class, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the assigned reading….
The culture of entitlement continues.
Professors have an incentive not to give realistic grades
Thankfully, I don’t have that problem. The college where I teach always backs me up. I tell my students on day one that they’ll get the grade they deserve. Some seemed quite surprised that I’m a man of my word.
If they are surprised that you are a man of your word then you must be behaving in a way that in inconsistent with their previous experience. So as the article indicates, the students expect to make a good grade just for showing up.
The other incentive for treating the students as the customer professors face is the use of student evaluations to evaluate faculty teaching. Student evaluation of faculty is a great tool for developmental purposes but a horrible tool for evaluative purposes if you are concerned with student learning. If you are concerned with student happiness and want to increase the revenue of the institution then using faculty evaluations makes perfect sense.
Physics Geek, you are indeed fortunate to teach in a school that will back you up. In more than 30 years of teaching Juniors and Seniors at a Big Ten university, I have seen the standards of excellence, as well as the number of students willing to do the work necessary to meet those standards, decline steadily. It seems that the institutional goal at my school is simply to maximize revenue, and our administration’s attitude is that you can’t do that by giving students the grade they actually earn and deserve.
Congratulations on your good fortune of teaching at a school with higher expectations for its students.
Physics Geek: What college do you teach at?
Well, I know that many of my students drink, and I can’t tell that any of them study at all. So, that would be “yes.”
If you knew you were going to graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in
non-dischargeable debt into the teeth of a truly awful job market, you’d probably drink more as well.
As a recent college graduate, I can honestly say that about 65% of college consists of repeating things that I learned homeschooling myself (high school equivalent data). I don’t remember ever being challenged till Junior or Senior year. And yes, just about everyone I knew spent more time drinking/ doing illicit substances than studying. Someone like myself, who studied more of the time, was definitely the exception to the rule.
Many of my classes were just busy work and nothing else. For example, I spent hours drawing maps of areas we were reading about in a senior level world lit class. That’s 4th grade level work.
I think this is going to depend on what school and what course of study. Go to one of the “name” schools in science or engineering, and you’ll see plenty of hard work still being done by the undergraduates.
Ultimately, this comes down to two complementary problems:
a. Lots of people going to college who really shouldn’t be, and
b. Lots of “extra” (read unnecessary) colleges out there happy to take their loaned money and hand them a degree.
Expansion of Federal subsidy in student loans has only exacerbated this problem since in addition to helping a relatively small number of kids who couldn’t go to college be able to afford it, its also let colleges get away with continually jacking up tuition costs and encouraged lots of kids who *shouldn’t* go to college to waste a lot of their money and time doing so.
Still, with no end to increases in college education tuition in sight, but the worst job market for recent college grads in 30+ years, this bubble is ripe to pop.
Unfortunately, I think this is going to spark yet another large federal bailout, only this one aimed at students with non-dischargable student loan debt. Its a repeat of the housing bubble, with the gov’t sucking up taxpayer dollars to bailout the housing crash, caused by stupid gov’t lending policy.
Substitute “college loan” for “housing loan” here, and that’s what we’re talking about.
I thought it was a trick question.
I didn’t drink that much in college … but I sure played a lot of cards in the university center! lol
Things seem to have gotten worse since I was banished from academe for refusing to pass subliterate students. In my day, students expected only a C for just attending (though there were some who expected a C for merely registering).
Such a survey certainly makes students look bad. But while it’s true most don’t belong in college, they expect inflated grades because they’ve been getting them–from professors pressured into doing the bidding of administrators concerned only with a high retention rate.
At least, that’s how it is at the nation’s largest urban university, where I taught for almost thirty years, and where there is now a procedure, set up soon after my departure, which invites students to complain about professors who fail to inflate grades or who don’t inflate them enough.
My persecution began in earnest when I was prevented from teaching and given busy work in an attempt to justify my professorial salary (over $90,000), including writing a report which, as I discovered later, had already been done. With legal help, I fought back, but finally had to retire or face financial ruin.
The new procedure makes the tactics used against me unnecessary, and a protracted resistance like mine highly unlikely. A professor refusing to inflate grades can now be brought up on disciplinary charges.
What’s particularly terrifying about the state of higher education is that administrators will do whatever it takes to keep grades inflated.
Frederick K. Lang
Professor Emeritus of English
Brooklyn College,
City University of New York