On 3rd November, the Chronicle published "American colleges find the Chinese-student boom a tricky fit". Here is the "flava" that stuck with me.
But some professors say they have significantly changed their teaching practices to accommodate the students. During quizzes, Mr. St. Pierre now requires everyone to leave books at the front of the classroom to prevent cheating, a precaution he had not taken during his two decades at Delaware. And participation counts less, so as not to sink the grades of foreign students. In the past, he required members of the class to give two or three presentations during the semester. Now he might ask them to give one. "I've had American students saying they don't understand what's being said in the presentations," he says. "It's painful."From the 9th November Wall Street Journal, I give you some anecdotal evidence of something many of you may have suspected, "Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay".
After reading and posting these two articles, I am not sure which is the greater crime as a professor - posting links on College Misery or the dumbing down of standards.
Prof. Hyde: Quit your whining. Lower standards mean less work for us and more time to gallivant about town looking for new adventures.
Good links. Good commentary. Appropriate use of "flava." What's not to like?
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely something to the idea that students in STEM fields are smarter, and/or willing to work harder/put in more time. I teach writing in the disciplines, and this semester I have two sections of scientists, and two of mostly mixed humanities/social science majors. More of the scientists *say* that they feel out of their element in a writing class, but, as a group, they're doing much better on some of the same assignments, mostly because they actually do the work (and follow instructions when doing so). There's a slightly higher ESL quotient, which leads to the occasional garbled sentence, but the higher-order thinking skills are definitely there.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes have engineering envy. At least according to my students, our introductory engineeering classes have 30-50% fail rates, and the students see nothing wrong with that. I can just guess what they'd be saying if I flunked 1/3 to 1/2 of the students in my classes. After all, it's English, it's supposed to be an easy A (or at least a B). Not that I *want* to flunk them, but the freedom to assign a task that some part of the class will find beyond their current skills (but the rest will find usefully challenging) would be nice.
I also find myself wondering whether higher anticipated starting salaries lead STEM majors to engage in less paid work to offset/avoid loans during school (and/or whether they have more and better-paid major-related, possibly on-campus work opportunities available to them). I may be venturing into dangerous territory here, but I really do think that much of the decline in higher education that *does* exist can be attributed to neither students nor professors having as much time as they once did to spend on any one student's learning in any one class. When you come right down to it, learning requires both the acquisition of new information and extensive practice doing something with that information (to make it stick, and to develop associated skills). It also requires assigning tasks that are difficult and complex enough to produce idiosyncratic (and hence hard-to-grade) results. The kind of engineering/computer science problems that the article describes sound great, precisely because they do require time and effort and tolerance of frustration (and getting Bs and Cs now and then). It's getting harder and harder to require the same level of effort in the humanities (and, I'm sure others here will say, in other fields as well).
Cassandra:
ReplyDeleteI think the ability to fail large sections of classes IS a little more prevalent in STEM, but of course that's because the collective culture. That is, administration isn't easier on us or anything, but because we all do it, we have collective standards.
It's much harder to be tough when your colleagues in your field and neighboring fields aren't also tough.
Or, to put it another way, STEM is falling more slowly into the tragedy of the commons. (But it's still falling.)
I deal with the issue of language (both oral and written) with many foreign students in my classes. I want to require multi-paragraph answers to exam questions but the foreign students just can't do write that well even when they know the answer.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to say that the ability to write short essays is assumed for students entering freshman chemistry. That would exclude many of my students who would otherwise do ok.
I generally like my foreign students. They often add a different perspective to class discussion. I was a bit surprised by a Chinese student a couple semesters ago who was stymied by being asked to write her own opinion in an essay exam. She was used to simply repeating what her teachers said. When I told her to write what she thought, she went blank.
ReplyDeleteWhen the semester was over she gave me a thank you, a small bottle of Chinese liquor that is roughly the equivalent of lighter fluid. If my department ever has a "purple Jesus" party (or a "hairy buffalo", Miami of Ohio grads can Google it) I'm all set!
Cassandra: It's not because they're working more. A linkedin discussion about my alma mater (a small engineering school) recently pondered the "watering down" of graduation requirements and capabilities of modern grads. Sidestepping the current quality of graduates, many old grads shared anecdotes of walking 5 miles uphill both ways, in the snow.
ReplyDeleteBut a common thread amongst oldsters was significantly more contact time per week and frequent 6-day class schedules, plus traditional students working to provide sustenance and graduating with less debt.
My anecdotal experience from the end of the last millenium was traditional students not working, or working for spare cash, while funding sustenance and tuition with debt. Non-traditional students were more likely to work for sustenance and minimize debt.
I'd be interested in seeing data, but I doubt today's STEM students have less disposable time to spend on studying than several decades ago.
I get told all of the time that I shouldn't adjust my standards for my athletes at Big State. I won't adjust them for the athletes, and I won't adjust them for international students. This does, however, mean strings of uniquely tortured prose both from ESOL and native English speakers. Doesn't matter where you're from, you can still f*ck up English.
ReplyDeleteA student in my algebra class this semester could not speak very much english, could not understand much of what I was saying, could not phrase questions, and hence could not learn anything.
ReplyDeleteConsequently, he dropped out.
Learn english! Sorry if that makes me sound racist, but WTF?!
EMH, I agree. TOEFL scores seem widely inaccurate. In the chemistry lab, it's a question of safety for the student who can't speak or understand English and everybody around them. I have students who can't speak English but their lab partner translates everything the lab instructor says. That's not safe and frustrating. Short of requiring an oral safety exam at the beginning of the semester, there's not much I can do.
ReplyDeleteBen, you wouldn't be the first to suspect the integrity of TOEFL scores.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes have students who had a decent TOEFL score, but, based on their proficiency in English it leaves me wondering if the process was something along the lines of "Let's see, did your fee payment of $200-300 USD go through? Yeah, it did...hey, congratulations, you got a high enough score for admission to a US/Can uni!"
My ESL students are mostly at the coping/comprehending point, but they also have to make it through two years of an American college or university (or an overseas one that produces transferable credits) before they take my class. And, while I suppose it's theoretically possible to electrocute oneself in one of my classrooms, they're generally a low (physical) risk environment, and what risks there are don't require English comprehension to avoid, just common sense and a basic knowledge of the dangers present in a pretty standard building with late 20th/early 21st century technology (i.e. electricity, various cords, cables, and pieces of furniture to trip over, windows that you might be able to fall out of if you really tried, heavy objects affixed to walls and ceilings that you might be able to bring down on yourself ditto). Now that papers are handed in virtually, we don't even have to worry about paper cuts and staplers.
ReplyDelete