They realize it's all one giant scam, it's better to try to be a tiktok th0t then be a corporatist wage slave for b00mers.
Discontinuity in student preparedness?
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Yes, I've seen this this year. It is insane. Last year students were struggling with basic calculus. This year, they're struggling with solving for x in simple equations (I'm talking about intro to micro students here).
I'm at a loss with how to teach them. I'm begging my chair to establish math prerequisites for all econ courses.
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I teach at a way lower ranked school. I have students who asked me how to solve x + 1 = 2. But arguably even worse were students who emailed me saying, "professor, the solution is 220; I put in 200; why was my answer marked incorrect?"
Yes. At a state flagship teaching in the business school. Roughly top 10 US news for MBAs. This isn’t meaningful for research but it is typically an accurate ranking of student quality. This is the first year we haven’t required the GMAT and the decline is incredible. People can’t do basic 6th grade math, let alone pert.
I've been a prof about 10 years at a nonselective regional college. Taught in grad school (100+ program on Repec, so nothing special) during the Great Recession, and was a lecturer briefly in the mid-aughts.
Is it just me/my institution, or have the rest of you also experienced a very sharp decline in student quality/preparedness/whatever-you-want-to-call-it this term? The 21-22 year wasn't great, either, but this seems considerably worse to me. Maybe it's just my institution, though?
Thanks in advance for your perspectives.
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I teach at a way lower ranked school. I have students who asked me how to solve x + 1 = 2. But arguably even worse were students who emailed me saying, "professor, the solution is 220; I put in 200; why was my answer marked incorrect?"
Yes. At a state flagship teaching in the business school. Roughly top 10 US news for MBAs. This isn’t meaningful for research but it is typically an accurate ranking of student quality. This is the first year we haven’t required the GMAT and the decline is incredible. People can’t do basic 6th grade math, let alone pert.
I've been a prof about 10 years at a nonselective regional college. Taught in grad school (100+ program on Repec, so nothing special) during the Great Recession, and was a lecturer briefly in the mid-aughts.
Is it just me/my institution, or have the rest of you also experienced a very sharp decline in student quality/preparedness/whatever-you-want-to-call-it this term? The 21-22 year wasn't great, either, but this seems considerably worse to me. Maybe it's just my institution, though?
Thanks in advance for your perspectives.
There’s a certain extent to which I think it’s an MBA and yeah, the point isn’t the math. But of the very few things I think you have to know as a manager, discounting future cash flows is very much one of the things! And I had people complaining about not being able to do the formulas.
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I work at what is probably the best public STEM university in the country. I have been complaining about this for a few years now. A few highlights:
(1) every exam about 15% of my students for some reason or another aren't in the classroom to take the test;
(2) I receive so many requests for homework extensions that I now grant them by default and am strongly considered dropping homework as part of my course;
(3) students ask me for letters of recommendation for grad school but can't be bothered to complete major assignments or even show up for exams;
(4) my university has a formal disability accommodation that allows students to pick when to take exams and guarantees them unlimited and unilateral power to pick exam dates and due dates for assignments (no, I am not exaggerating);
(5) students listen to headphones, have conversations amongst themselves, etc. in class without realizing that this is inappropriate;
(6) students perceive that I have an *obligation* to make course content available in the format of their choosing, on demand (typeset lecture notes, video lecture in case they don't want to class, and so on and so forth), often times acknowledging that they don't even have a "legitimate" excuse to be absent.
None of this was an issue for me before the pandemic. They have been taught this. By us. Our admins continue to inundate us with regular emails about how we have an obligation to be "understanding" of students. The students have figured this out and now it's just a complete joke.
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Same experience!
I work at what is probably the best public STEM university in the country. I have been complaining about this for a few years now. A few highlights:
(1) every exam about 15% of my students for some reason or another aren't in the classroom to take the test;
(2) I receive so many requests for homework extensions that I now grant them by default and am strongly considered dropping homework as part of my course;
(3) students ask me for letters of recommendation for grad school but can't be bothered to complete major assignments or even show up for exams;
(4) my university has a formal disability accommodation that allows students to pick when to take exams and guarantees them unlimited and unilateral power to pick exam dates and due dates for assignments (no, I am not exaggerating);
(5) students listen to headphones, have conversations amongst themselves, etc. in class without realizing that this is inappropriate;
(6) students perceive that I have an *obligation* to make course content available in the format of their choosing, on demand (typeset lecture notes, video lecture in case they don't want to class, and so on and so forth), often times acknowledging that they don't even have a "legitimate" excuse to be absent.
None of this was an issue for me before the pandemic. They have been taught this. By us. Our admins continue to inundate us with regular emails about how we have an obligation to be "understanding" of students. The students have figured this out and now it's just a complete joke. -
OP here from my phone.
Thank you all for sharing! From what I’m hearing, everyone experienced a decline in the quality of student behavior and preparedness over many years, and some of you experienced a sharp decrease since the pandemic/return from the pandemic. Is that a fair summary?
Anybody have the opposite? Anyone just stay the same, or even see improvements? I don’t want to fall prey to confirmation bias…
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I've talked with a lot of people about this, and while some people say that things have held level, the majority say they've seen a sharp decline in the last year or two. I don't know anyone who thinks it got better.
My class material has been constant across years, and assignments that used to have most of the class get 90%+ now have large portions of the class getting 50% and deserving 20%. It blows my mind. And I am very systematic about what I do in the classroom, right down to having complete scripts of what I say class by class. So it really can't be about any significant change in my delivery.
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Quebec - ancestry of the filles du roi
This is happening everywhere. Even at good schools, half of the students are irredeemably incompetent and cannot solve even basic problems.
It's not just in business and econ:
"Half of Quebec nursing students fail September licensing exam ... the exam was unchanged for the last couple of years. The preceding exam, in March 2022, had a 71 per cent success rate, while the exam in September 2021 had an 81 per cent pass rate."
https://globalnews.ca/news/9278800/quebec-nursing-exam-complaints-probe/ -
It used to that students rarely received special accommodations (academic, medical, mental health, etc). Now it seems quite frequent in every class I teach. Students either contact the dean’s office to get an accommodation letter, or failing that they whine to me about their problems (sometimes after missing two weeks of class because they’re “under too much stress” and the like).
This is probably bc the deans now actively encourage students to do it. Often times they will tell you to get accommodations "in case of an emergency" if you have a long term illness (or more commonly -- ADHD).
I got them approved only bc of a dean breathing down by shoulder to get them when I mentioned I had health issues to her, and I never used them except for one time I was terribly terribly ill.
- Recent college grad who has chronic (but under management) illness
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It used to that students rarely received special accommodations (academic, medical, mental health, etc). Now it seems quite frequent in every class I teach. Students either contact the dean’s office to get an accommodation letter, or failing that they whine to me about their problems (sometimes after missing two weeks of class because they’re “under too much stress” and the like).
This is probably bc the deans now actively encourage students to do it. Often times they will tell you to get accommodations "in case of an emergency" if you have a long term illness (or more commonly -- ADHD).
I got them approved only bc of a dean breathing down by shoulder to get them when I mentioned I had health issues to her, and I never used them except for one time I was terribly terribly ill.
- Recent college grad who has chronic (but under management) illnessThe problem is people with very minor issues or quite trivial issues badgering deans to get accomodations
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I work at what is probably the best public STEM university in the country. I have been complaining about this for a few years now. A few highlights:
(1) every exam about 15% of my students for some reason or another aren't in the classroom to take the test;
(2) I receive so many requests for homework extensions that I now grant them by default and am strongly considered dropping homework as part of my course;
(3) students ask me for letters of recommendation for grad school but can't be bothered to complete major assignments or even show up for exams;
(4) my university has a formal disability accommodation that allows students to pick when to take exams and guarantees them unlimited and unilateral power to pick exam dates and due dates for assignments (no, I am not exaggerating);
(5) students listen to headphones, have conversations amongst themselves, etc. in class without realizing that this is inappropriate;
(6) students perceive that I have an *obligation* to make course content available in the format of their choosing, on demand (typeset lecture notes, video lecture in case they don't want to class, and so on and so forth), often times acknowledging that they don't even have a "legitimate" excuse to be absent.
None of this was an issue for me before the pandemic. They have been taught this. By us. Our admins continue to inundate us with regular emails about how we have an obligation to be "understanding" of students. The students have figured this out and now it's just a complete joke.Yes spot on it's bc of the deans. Students catch on too ofc, but too many woke events these days inundating students w/ that mentality
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Isn't even like Penn's MBA like 25% listed as 'lgbtq' now etc? The academy is saying more than ever 'being able to whine, lie or conform is more important than being a little smarter.' Yes this may have been the case but in our age of information it's more well known than ever.
Controlling for intelligence the highest scoring/perfect gpa are those who got the most extensions, most conformist, took exams outside of the classroom or extended time, most progressive, biggest whiners.
On top of this you'll penalize those who are actually in class rather than those who are gaming the system.
Why would declining standards across the board surprise you as more and more people check out?
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I taught for years at a Big State School. This semester's students are the worst crop I've seen. Some examples:
- Students on the disability plan effectively get to take exams whenever they want. Of course, they continually procrastinate, taking the exam weeks after everyone else. They then do horribly because now they're really overwhelmed.
- Attendance rates are far below what they were pre-COVID. The students that show up are mostly just staring at their laptops/phones, doing who knows what. I saw one student posing/preening during class taking pictures of himself.
- However, more than a few students show up to class to vacantly stare at the slideshow.
It's as if they have no clue on what to do during a college lecture.- Students now lack any resilience whatsoever. If they receive a poor score on an assignment, they give up and check out for the rest of the semester.
- Many students now leave multiple choice questions blank when they don't think they know the answer. Guessing can't hurt!
- I sense that many don't understand basic graphical representations. Forget basic algebra!
- It is a waste of time to assign out-of-classroom work anymore. They all just cheat/share answers with one another. Nobody learns anything through homework anymore.
- Worst of all, students are now wholly incurious. It used to be that 20-30% of students at least feigned interest in the material. This semester, it's as if nobody cares at all.
Sad!
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I teach 3 upper level undergraduate classes at a big state school VLRM. What gets me is the number of students that just get up and leave mid class. Yeah I get it some material is nit as exciting as other content but it’s all important. When they leave (the classes have about 35 in them) it is pretty disruptive. I’ve nit said anything but it does take you off point for a few moments. Just rude.
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Yes, the leaving mid class thing is so rude. I think in one class two students texted each other from the two sides of the classroom about leaving in the middle. When I turned my back, one of them left and the other started waiting until I turned my back again. It was too painful for me not to say anything about it. So I just turned my back and let him go.
There were only 3 more students left but I was sure they were begging me quietly to finish early. At that point I had no motivation to continue any further. I summarized the remaining 10 slides in one minute and said class was over.
I teach 3 upper level undergraduate classes at a big state school VLRM. What gets me is the number of students that just get up and leave mid class. Yeah I get it some material is nit as exciting as other content but it’s all important. When they leave (the classes have about 35 in them) it is pretty disruptive. I’ve nit said anything but it does take you off point for a few moments. Just rude.