And that invites a question: Has college become too easy?
Ashley Dixon, a sophomore at George Mason University, anticipated more work in college than in high school. Instead, she has less. In a typical week, Dixon spends 18 hours in classes and another 12 in study. All told, college course work occupies 30 hours of her week. Dixon is a full-time student, but college, for her, is a part-time job.
“I was expecting it to be a lot harder,’’ said Dixon, 20. “I thought I was going to be miserable, trying to get good grades. And I do get good grades, and I’m not working very hard.’’
Declining study time is a discomfiting truth about the vaunted US higher-education system. The trend is generating debate over how much students really learn, even as colleges raise tuition every year.
Some critics say colleges and their students have grown lazy. Today’s collegiate culture, they say, rewards students with high grades for minimal effort and distracts them with athletics, clubs, and climbing walls on campuses that increasingly resemble resorts.
PS: If you send us an article at 2:45 am, and it has not yet appeared on the page by 4:15 am, it doesn't make us "detached" and "indifferent" to the readers. It means we're fucking asleep.
Wow - a whole article about a problem in higher ed without once blaming the faculty! There is a remark in there about "colleges" perhaps getting "lazy." Of course some readers will assume that means us, the faculty. But the author does not explicitly attack faculty for giving out easy grades and lowering standards.
ReplyDeleteCM, time to delete. Don't know if this was directed at you or at AdjunctSlave, but eitherway it's douchey.
DeleteAgreed (to both AdjunctSlave and F&T).
DeleteWell... it IS our fault. For not standing to the adminiscritters, and for playing the teaching evaluations game. Not your fault, AdjunctSlave, but the fault of those who have not grown a spine after getting tenure.
ReplyDeleteYep. That's a fact.
DeleteThat might be the best PS I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Although I fear the RGMs may be undermining their image(s), and that of the compound, a bit. Anyone would think they were responsible adults with jobs and families and a serious investment in making the academy better rather than mostly-nocturnal hedonists who spend their time getting wasted when not taking potshots at students. Or maybe "fucking asleep" is code for "too drunk and/or stoned to check email?"
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ReplyDeleteLike adjunctslave, I was glad to see no professor-blaming. I do think our workloads play a role in the patterns that the article very ably describes, but mostly because, as F&T points out, we have less and less time to spend on/with any one student. We definitely don't have the time to deal with the flak that would come from students, parents, administrators *and* some colleagues if we were suddenly to increase the workload and/or raise standards, and dole out the low/failing grades that would result (also, a number of us don't have the job security and/or income cushion to risk it). I can provide a significant amount of additional challenge to my students who have more time and/or initiative by including a lot of low-stakes assignments that they'll get a lot out of if they do them thoroughly and thoughtfully (as a good many do), but if I were to alter the carrot/stick balance by making those assignments higher-stakes, students who half-ass them now (and get a least a bit out of the process, but nowhere near what they could) would be up in arms, and I'd be exhausted from fighting about how many points I awarded for each activity and why, even before I started commenting on the papers the little assignments are designed to "scaffold"/build up to.
ReplyDeleteIn the present situation, students *can* still get a good education by going above and beyond the minimum required to get a B (or even, in some cases, an A), and taking advantage of other opportunities for truly "higher" learning available to them. But they have to take the initiative; most of us aren't teaching in situations where we have time to either coax or goad those who aren't fully engaged into being more so. And there's no magic classroom technique that's going to accomplish that, in part because, as the article points out, most learning in college is *supposed* to go on outside the classroom. We design a framework that makes learning possible, and serve as guides, and help students check their progress, but we can't do it for them.
Now you know why, whenever a snowflake in any of my science classes whines, "IT'S HARD, IT'S HARD, IT'S HARD...", my retort is: "At least you know you're getting your money's worth!"
ReplyDeleteBut of course, I can say that since I have tenure.