next »

[psychobubble]

The difference between now and when I went to college (in the early 90's) is that education is less important.  Everyone prioritizes things and less important things give way to more important things.  When I was in college, schoolwork came first.  If I had a big exam, papers, or other assignment, everything else gave way.  I worked, but I told my workplace what my hours would be.  If they tried to schedule me another time, I just said "fire me".  I missed my closest cousin's wedding because it was during midterms and he understood.  Now, it is the other way around.
      I understood that I needed to get everything I could out of that short period of time because if I didn't, I would never get it.  I wanted to be in the marching band, but my advisor told me to choose my major or band.  That let me know how things were.  Many of the things I learned took hours of uninterrupted study and thinking to understand.  I can't teach my students those things anymore.  No one seems to be able to teach their students these things anymore.  That knowledge and those skills will die with my generation and be lost to future generations to their detriment. 
     When I was in college and I read about the dark ages, I didn't really understand how a lot of the classical learning could be "lost" for such a long period of time.  It was in the books.  People had the books.  Why didn't they just read them?  I didn't understand how you could have an entire population unable to understand something that was written down and accessible.  I understand now.

Thomas Friedman's Op-Ed piece yesterday pertains to this topic.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?th&emc=th

[henry_adams]

Thanks for sharing Friedman's Op-Ed piece.  When students graduate from my institution, the ones who are clever and energetic and willing to try new things get jobs (even though many are low-paying and have no benefits) while the students who expect a job that suits them perfectly to appear by magic...well, some of them are still waiting for that job to materialize years after graduation.

[temporaryname]

The difference between now and when I went to college (in the early 90's) is that education is less important.  Everyone prioritizes things and less important things give way to more important things.  When I was in college, schoolwork came first.  If I had a big exam, papers, or other assignment, everything else gave way.  I worked, but I told my workplace what my hours would be.  If they tried to schedule me another time, I just said "fire me".  I missed my closest cousin's wedding because it was during midterms and he understood.  Now, it is the other way around.
      I understood that I needed to get everything I could out of that short period of time because if I didn't, I would never get it.  I wanted to be in the marching band, but my advisor told me to choose my major or band.  That let me know how things were.  Many of the things I learned took hours of uninterrupted study and thinking to understand.  I can't teach my students those things anymore.  No one seems to be able to teach their students these things anymore.  That knowledge and those skills will die with my generation and be lost to future generations to their detriment. 
     When I was in college and I read about the dark ages, I didn't really understand how a lot of the classical learning could be "lost" for such a long period of time.  It was in the books.  People had the books.  Why didn't they just read them?  I didn't understand how you could have an entire population unable to understand something that was written down and accessible.  I understand now.

But of course you prioritized education like that--that's why you're here, hanging around on the Chronicle of Higher Education fora. I would be very, very willing to make a large wager that there were a lot of students in the 90s (and the 80s, and the 50s, and the 20s, and the 1800s, and the 1500s, probably all the way back to the founding of Bologna and Al-Karaouine and before that, even) who didn't prioritize their education as highly as the average participant here did.

I really do think that a lot of the handwringing among faculty and those who aspire to be faculty about how horrible students are these days boils down to observation bias--those of us who are faculty members or in grad school generally had to perform at an above average level as undergrads (which, in most cases, requires prioritizing education pretty high), and we're surrounded by people who did the same. Basically, our basis for deciding what was "normal" among our peers is pretty abnormal.

[rowan1]

As a theatre Prof I actually have little patience for the "I'm too busy" stuff my students occassionally try to throw at us.  What was described in the article was a fact of life for me as an undergrad (way back in the 1980s) - in addition to being an RA, President of a couple of student groups, working, etc. I was also the departmental Master ELectrician (which meant shop hours) had directing/acting or design classes that kept me up all night at times.  I Stage Managed, Acted, Directed and designed for the mainstage.  We just accepted it as a fact of life that came with the territory.  I quit jobs when my schedule got too rough - and lived on ramen, until I had the time for another job. It was just what you did.

Of my students about 1/3rd are first generation college students, over 1/2 work outside the program, almost all are involved in student groups in addition to the theatre student group.  The vast majority of them manage their time, they get done what they need to get done when they need to get it done or they accept the consequences - my non theatre students are the ones most likely to beg for extensions, flake out on assignments, not come to class, etc.

The theatre majors don't have the highest gpas on campus - although the ones in our program who are most active and honestly the most talented, are almost all honor students.  They get it - this is the reality of being a theatre student.  They also see all the faculty putting in the same time for productions.  And they are learning from us that the real world is often the same - you have to schedule auditions, rehearsals and jobs,  You have no set schedule beyond a couple months at a time if you are in a show.

Now I don't doubt that students today are busy but I don't think it is a fair comparison to look at theatre students - or music students either - rehearsals and performances and the time commitment may compare to athletics, but the outside of class time requirements are  abit different - especially when you figure in that fact that rehearsals involve multiple people.

[spork]

Back when I was an undergrad who emerged from his paper bag each morning to walk uphill in the snow for 10 miles to get to class (the 1980s), it was fairly typical for my friends and I to put in a minimal average of 5 hours per night of studying.  In other words, start at 7 pm and if you're done by midnight, that was an early night.  Yes, some of us were varsity athletes, performing musicians, involved in intramurals, or whatever, but the school marketed itself as a place where academic success required a lot of time and hard work.  So that's where the emphasis was.

Yes, my undergraduate institution was far outside the norm then, and it still is, but at the schools I've worked at, visited, or otherwise interacted with, the marketing now is all about "if you send your child here, he/she will have the time of his/her life and emerge 4 years later completely self-sufficient." Fun, fun, fun, oh hey look I've got a diploma where's my six figure salary? Effort, ability, and consequences for one's actions aren't what universities are talking about.  They decided that to compete in the higher education marketplace, they must market themselves that way.  And as a result, they've got to now live up to their hype. I'm going to guess that"student life" staff, programs, and expenditures have grown much faster than those for academics.

[airball]

I really do think that a lot of the handwringing among faculty and those who aspire to be faculty about how horrible students are these days boils down to observation bias--those of us who are faculty members or in grad school generally had to perform at an above average level as undergrads (which, in most cases, requires prioritizing education pretty high), and we're surrounded by people who did the same. Basically, our basis for deciding what was "normal" among our peers is pretty abnormal.

What I was going to say. Most of us are teaching students who are less prepared, less motivated and less gifted than we or any of our friends were.

Guess how many people in my high school class didn't go to college? Zero.
Guess how long most of my current students would last at my Fancy SLAC? About five minutes.

Apples and Oranges, people!

airball

[archman]

And on the other end of the spectrum, there are the effects of continuing change in american education systems, and culture shifts.

I'm pretty sure that all but the newest or most "sheltered" instructors have enough time and experience to differentiate learning ability of their successive student classes over time vs. those of the instructor's personal experience. After a few years of teaching, most instructors I know do *not* compare student performance against their own personal experience. They compare student performance against the scores from previously taught classes.

[kedves]

This appeared recently in the CHE:  an interesting article about the job of stereotyping college students.

If there is a demand for something that can be met with human ingenuity, supply will emerge to meet that demand.  There is demand for writers and speakers who focus on how today's students are different from or worse than previous generations of students, despite a lack of evidence.  In the financial markets of recent years, the demand was for mortgage investments that the existing number of mortgages could not meet.  Creativity filled the gap.  The sloppy reasoning people use to generalize about college students has less impact and is less harmful, of course, but I don't think it is without impact or harm.

[temporaryname]

And on the other end of the spectrum, there are the effects of continuing change in american education systems, and culture shifts.

I'm pretty sure that all but the newest or most "sheltered" instructors have enough time and experience to differentiate learning ability of their successive student classes over time vs. those of the instructor's personal experience. After a few years of teaching, most instructors I know do *not* compare student performance against their own personal experience. They compare student performance against the scores from previously taught classes.

Well, in that case, if I'm allowed to generalize from my own experience teaching to the entire population of college students, I'll attest to no difference between now and 15 years ago (when I had my first TA gig).

I don't think my personal experience is actually a valid basis for such generalization, though.