The student, Provost Jacques Barzun of Columbia wrote in 1968, is conscious that his teachers subject him to “cavalier treatment … unpunctual, slipshod in marking papers, ill-prepared in lecture, careless about assignments.” Student evaluations of teaching were supposed to be the corrective, but students turned out to be less interested in improved teaching than they were in better grades. By 1981, the Harvard sociologist David Riesman was warning that student evaluations might “mislead … students to flock to the courses of …‘easy’ instructors.”
Today, the ruling alliance in undergraduate education consists of students who value their studies as a sideline to their social lives, adjuncts whose livelihood depends on student evaluations, faculty members who are interested in research and their own socioprofessional activities, and administrators who want to maintain or expand enrollments. Judging by time-use data, the student consumer is most interested in campus social life. As a reminder, I have on my shelf a recruiting postcard from one well-regarded campus labeled “Join the Club” and picturing students sunbathing around the campus pool. Out-of-class study time has fallen by half since the 1960s, and the trend applies to all groups and institutions.
Interestingly, grades have not suffered. When social scientists plot average study time against average grades over 50 years, they find that study time has gone down while grades have gone up.
Some campuses, such as the University of California at Berkeley and the U.S. Military Academy, and some disciplines, such as engineering, have held the line. But talent waste is no longer an access issue only. It is also a byproduct of the college experience, as shaped, in large measure, by student consumerism.
Experts explore the quality and assessment of higher education.
8 Responses to Less Studying, Higher Grades
ric822 - September 2, 2010 at 10:33 am
The Elephant in the room is the K-12 education system that focuses less on education and more on socialization. For example, in far too many High Schools, getting a good grade has less to do with demonstrated knowledge than it does demonstrated behavior. If you behave your self, you will pass the class.Are we truly surprised that so many of our students do not have an education mindset when we (the K-12 education system) have taught them that it is not important? This has resulted in Higher Education focusing more on socialization as that is how to draw students to their school.
jameswilliams - September 2, 2010 at 11:57 am
The correlation between student evaluations of a course and the eagerness of the professor to give high grades for little or no work seems obvious. At my university, for example, we have a professor whose syllabus states explicitly that he guarantees students a grade of A if they merely come to class. They don’t have to do any work–they just have to serve as his audience. Not surprisingly, students voted the professor “teacher of the year.”Administrators bear much of the blame for such shameful behavior. In the case above, our dean and provost are fully aware of the professor’s guarantee, but they nevertheless over-ruled the department’s negative tenure decision and granted the professor tenure. Go figure.
blue_state_academic - September 2, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Study time is down and grades have gone up? Clearly today’s students are smarter and more productive than earlier generations.
doctors - September 2, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I do not think that students are smarter. They have different tools which have significantly altered the learning process, especially within the classroom. Because they can access information, they do not see the need to retain knowledge or engage in deep learning. As such, term term ‘smart’as we know it does not adequately describe the skills these students have developed. Nevertheless, some of the traditional college attributes are lacking and they are still sorely needed, such as academic writing (which is not texting), scholarly research (which is not Wikipedia), and close reading (which the Nook and IPAD can accommodate nicely).
gplm2000 - September 7, 2010 at 11:55 am
Of course study time is down, along with knowledge. New online tools, exams and quizzes, make it much easier to get a good grade. Or, the elimination of them. The dumbing-down of standards enables students to do less while being graded less critically. Higher education needs to decide if educating human beings is more important than guaranted outcomes. If so, then lets return to the merit system of earned grades.
sibyl - September 8, 2010 at 9:26 am
Okay, sure, I can student-bash with the best of them. But I’d rather wonder about what I can do to change this. Can I create a classroom experience that encourages students to spend more time studying? Can I find ways to incorporate what they like to do in their class assignments — that is, if they are going to attend a fraternity party, can I have them write an ethnographic study of the event, or write a creative story about the experience, or place it in the historical context of the changing roles of fraternities and sororities in collegiate life? Or can I have them compare the experiences of two different video games, to analyze gender roles or narrative conventions? If all they want is good grades, can I create higher expectations for those good grades? Can I align the things I want to achieve with the incentive system that they worship, i.e. good grades? I would think that no one has a better chance to change that than me, in my classroom, acting locally (as it were).
minutiae_man - September 8, 2010 at 11:06 am
Students aren’t really the ones to blame. Data showing the severe flaws in the student evaluation process is very easily found if one looks for it. Student evaluation results do not prove effective teaching. Good student evaluation scores can result from effective teaching methods — methods which result in retained learning. Good student evaluations can even more easily result from effective manipulation regardless of actual student learning outcomes. Bad student evaluations can result from factors totally unrelated to the student learning outcomes. Studies have shown gender bias, and age bias in student evaluations. Students have been shown to give higher student evaluation scores if the first test of the term is considered easy. Experiments have shown a good actor can receive great evaluation scores including for knowledge of the material – even if the lecture contains little real content and the actor has no actual knowledge of the subject. Student evaluation scores at the end of the term have been shown to correlate with the scores the students give in the first week of the class. Student evaluation scores have been shown to correlate with a student’s expectation of their grade. (etc., etc., etc.)Students don’t use student evaluation forms for hiring, retention, and tenure decisions.
archman - September 8, 2010 at 11:44 am
I remember reading a study about long-term grade inflation in U.S. schools. It was something like 0.1 (out of a 4.0 scale) every decade, I believe.In my experience, 0.2-0.3 per decade seems more realistic.