<p>Profs blast lazy first-year students
<a href=“Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star”>Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star;
<p>“Wikipedia generation is lazy and unprepared for university’s rigours, survey of faculty says”</p>
<p>Apr 06, 2009
Kristin Rushowy
EDUCATION REPORTER</p>
<p>For anyone who has been teaching these last few years, you’ll know things just seem to get worse every year.</p>
<p>I haven’t noticed that…</p>
<p>I’ve been a TA for the past 4 years for Freshman/Sophomore Computer Science classes. I and other TAs have definitely noticed a strong decline in the capabilities of incoming students, especially mathematical, and an increase in cheating. Many are just lazy slackers and want good grades for little/no work. Of course, there are really intelligent and hard working students but these are the vast minority.</p>
<p>I’m not a professor or even a TA. I’m just a guy who went back to school to finish his undergraduate degree after taking 2-3 years off to work. I wasn’t a good student when I started college, but I am now, so I’ve kind of seen both sides of this. I go to a mid-level private university, so maybe my experience is unusual for one reason or another.</p>
<p>I’m amazed in my 300 and higher level economics and political science courses at the number of people who are on facebook on their laptops throughout the class period. I’m amazed at the number of people who openly admit that they have not read the material, but might get to it before the next exam. </p>
<p>I’m also amazed at the number of people who make their refusal to read obvious by the dumb questions they ask in class–questions directly addressed by the reading. </p>
<p>Students literally don’t get a lot of the concepts that are discussed in class because they have not opened the textbook. </p>
<p>I’m in a Constitutional Law course, and there are at least 5 students out of 25 that have not even purchased the books yet, and the class has 2 weeks left in it. How can you get by in a con law class without reading? You might think these students will just pay extra special attention in classes to make up for it…but they are the same students who are on facebook throughout the period. And then they have the audacity to ask questions when they don’t understand things?</p>
<p>Anyway…this has been on my mind a lot this semester. I have very little sympathy for people failing, or being unable to get jobs after graduating, when they haven’t even attempted to seriously learn the material.</p>
<p>Uh, so you guys think this has ever been different?</p>
<p>The article cites a bunch of undergrads who would agree with the posts here. I’m guessing the average age of the people with “perspective” on quality of incoming students is about 20?</p>
<p>not sure about a change, but I’ve TA’d for several years and I definitely do see a lack of preparation. when TA’ing courses for upperclassmen I’ve been blasted for failing half a class on an assignment because they couldn’t write a proper reflective/reaction paper (much less a research paper)! It’s ridiculous what some students think they can get away with! On the other hand, I recall having students say similar things about TA’s in class I’ve been in (that the TA was “too harsh”) and wondering what they were talking about b/c I’d done well on the assignment – so I’m not sure anything’s changed. My guess is that students are just plain lazy and many aren’t being prepared well…</p>
<p>I’m no teacher, but I think it would be hasty to infer from these observations that there’s just more laziness in the younger generation. A more likely explanation might be that students who aren’t especially interested in academics are increasingly being pressured into higher education.</p>
<p>I was a terrible student, for many reasons, during my undergrad. I chose to party and chase skirts instead of bearing down and learning. I still managed a decent gpa (3.0/3.1) but could have gotten a lot more out of college, academically. I get so much more out of grad school than I previously did.
I start TA’ing in September and I am hoping to look at it from both sides, and see if I can help students get a little more out of their education. I think that partying, having fun and socializing is important in college… but I know where I did my undergrad (SUNY A…) it was pretty out of control. SUNY A was nothing more than a alcohol induced orgy, not a higher learning institution.</p>
<p>Yeah, obviously I can’t say if it is different now–I’m sure there have always been students who are unprepared and unwilling to do the work necessary to learn. It just struck me as surprising in upper-division courses. Oh well.</p>
<p>Daniel12 has a point.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t just say they’re lazy. They wouldn’t be if they enjoyed the material. They may just need to find something else to study.</p>
<p>My particular experiences have been different. Most of the grad students at my school didn’t do their BSc at my school and a few have admitted they wouldnt do nearly as well as they did in BSc had they attended our school.</p>
<p>Are there lazy students? Sure. But the environment is hyper-competitive and can be draining at times.</p>
<p>Any T.A. who tells the students in my program they’re lazy is either delusional or just full of ****.</p>
<p>You mean that older people think that younger people are lazy, immature, and unprepared for life?</p>
<p>I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. Obviously previous generations of older people thought that teenagers were perfect.</p>
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<p>There’s also this.</p>
<p>…
I think there are people who try too little and those who try too much. I, for one, probably try too much. Many try too little. I think most people fall somewhere in between.</p>
<p>I also think it’s convenient that they think this generation is lazy and stupid. I wonder how many of the teachers from the previous generation thought the current teachers’ generation was lazy and stupid.</p>
<p>In fact, maybe the teachers nowadays just aren’t as good. So maybe it’s last generation’s fault. It is their job, after all, to make us smart, hard-working independent problem solvers.</p>
<p>So what I’ve learned from this is that when the going gets tough, complain about how you suck at your job and it’s somebody else’s fault.</p>
<p>“I think the problem is with the universities,” Denissova said. “They have to teach better rather than blame high schools.”</p>
<p>Dennisova is spot on. And a fellow CS / Math person! Wow! Well that proves it.</p>
<p>Well many high schools in the US are force feeding kids high grades they don’t deserve and don’t rlly try and fight incompetence.</p>
<p>I think it is a mix of things. I do not think that getting rid of grade 13 (as I think the article mentions it?, I read in print a few days ago) is an issue. I think it is that people ARE pressure to go to university when many of them shouldn’t be here. A lot of my friends have dropped out, and rightfuly so. This is not because they are stupid. It is because they realize that this is not for them (most of them if not all, are in humanities and social sciences and are much better doing practical things). Most people in my classes who like what they are doing or see that this is a necessary step for other goals (med, law), do well. </p>
<p>I think the other problem is the high school curriculum. I don’t want to get into this too much, but I think it should be stricter, and I think that the workload should be higher, because it seems a lot of people are shocked by how much they have to do in University. I wasn’t, but my highschool didn’t really have an issue with grade inflation. Of course, this is very hard to fix since it is such a school-by-school, teacher-by-teacher issue. </p>
<p>I also do think that people expect things to just be handed to them on a plate to some extent as well. I’m making gross generalizations of course, but I don’t think people realize the value in putting a lot of work into something. And that sometimes, you can put in a lot of work and effort and still get a bad grade, or still not do well. That’s possible. People think if they put in minimal effort, they should get an A. Well, no, I disagree. I don’t think though, that this is something endemic to my generation. But perhaps what I think is a dumbing down of highschool curriculums does play a role in it. But, I have no idea, these are just my opinions without much evidence but my own experience.</p>
<p>I was a TA once several years ago. I was actually amazed at how good a responsible many student were. Many were brighter and more determined than I was. I will have to say that the lazy, cheating, direspectful ones brought me down more than it should have in retrospect. They were really only 10% - 20%, but it always felt like I had to work with them 50% of the time…I probably was working with them 50% of the time, and usually not in a positive way. It really drove me nuts. I can empathize with TA being very frustrated, but do stay respectful to your students. Like my experience you could be interacting with the most frustrating 15% of the class for most of your job. </p>
<p>As a TA, if you’re direspectful to your sincere students they will find a way to get you back.</p>
<p>jack63, care to elaborate this a bit more? "As a TA, if you’re direspectful to your sincere students they will find a way to get you back. "</p>
<p>I’ve been TA’ing for 3 terms… I’m not afraid to admit I have preference over different students… for the ones work hard and show efforts, email me constantly about questions and pay attention in class, I tend to help them much harder</p>
<p>for the students arrive in class 5-15mins late EVERYDAY and repeatably make silly mistakes during assignments… I tend to palter on them, anyone else feels the same way?</p>
<p>It maybe educationally incorrect, but I think some kids deserve to be thrown out of college until they are ready for the so called “high level education”</p>
<p>Zoo, I’d have to agree that some students currently attending colleges and universities simply do not belong there. Our friends over in admissions sometimes get a little too excited about selling the school and inviting as many in as possible! (Or so it seems…)</p>
<p>If students aren’t ready for college, they shouldn’t be graduating from HS…furthermore, if a kid hasn’t shown 8th grade reading/writing/arithmetic proficiency (which some college students I’ve met don’t appear to have), I really have no clue why we’re admitting them to high school!</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, many students’ deficiencies aren’t being caught UNTIL they get to college! From a preventative point of view, that is simply TOO LATE! (I really don’t care what “educationally correct” or “politically correct” people have to say. Study after study has shown that this needs to be caught and remediated AS SOON AS THE EARLY INDICATORS PERMIT – not when the student is hardly able to write a paper or complete an assignment.) I think this is really a systemic issue that is getting placed upon professors and TA’s because no one else wants to deal with it…</p>
<p>apumic, I totally agree with you! I forgot to mention I’ve been TAing for the freshmen entry-courses… compare to the Junior/senior level course I ta’ed before, it’s just like heaven vs hell… </p>
<p>Problem is many US highschools are way too easy to graduate… there is very different from the rest of the world, from where I was from (East Asia), kids got divided to different level of highschools, the lower type simply wont be able to apply for regular-university, they could only go to low tier college or community schools…</p>
<p>If I can choose again, i will NOT teach a freshman course again… it’s just frustrating to deal with many of those kids. they are too busy enjoying the “college life”, getting drunk and getting laid… study? is the last thing in their minds</p>