Professors at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities can probably find any number of ways to kill time during their office hours — grading papers, catching up on reading, playing FreeCell. But there’s one thing they’re not doing very much: counseling students.
For that, it seems, the Internet is to blame. In a survey conducted by The Minnesota Daily, three out of four students said they’d rather e-mail a professor or TA than trek to an office for face-to-face contact. The dwindling ranks of office-goers have left professors like Thomas Augst lamenting the days when students sought out faculty members, instead of expecting them to be seated at their computers, e-mail accounts open.
“All of us, I think, as faculty, recall in the not-so-distant past when students used to act as if their professor deserved a certain amount of respect,” says Mr. Augst, a professor of English. “Somehow these basic tools of the education road are being thrown out the window for the sake of students having this hyper-convenient access to their professors.” —Brock Read
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