@eandsmom I’m happy to share my experience with others! I should add, with regard to all those UCSD undergrads who asked me for letters, they would generally remember to thank me in person right after they asked me, but it was the old-fashioned written thank you notes that were so rare.
At my 20th college reunion a couple of years ago, a favorite professor of mine told me that today’s students, while amazing on paper, have more difficulty with the actual campus experience than did their parents’ generation. Of course she was probably humoring her audience, and I’ll acknowledge that her criteria may need to change with changing times (we can all acknowledge from recent history that today’s students are relatively savvy in using social media to effect social-media-funneled advocacy, for example). But this is what she said: today’s students are used to being micromanaged, in everything from parents intervening for grade changes to being hyper-scheduled in activities. They also have never had the experience of being disconnected, from their social lives, from their parents’ input, and from pop culture. They are absolutely addicted to screens. As a result, many soft skills – in-depth research on a single topic, budgeting their time to allow their thoughts to develop on a project, interpersonal courtesy, and listening, are all suffering. As a college professor, I saw this too, and the effects it had on the institution. Consider what you are paying for when you sent your child off to college. At my university, even by 2010 or so, the expectation was that a course would have its own website. And that website would include 100% of the course content. Every assignment was to be listed there, and every slide provided, and every study guide. There were suggestions that the course should also have a podcast, in which the lectures were recorded and made available. It should come as no surprise then that a large lecture course of 300+ students would regularly have only a third of students in actual attendance. Therefore, a sizable majority of students, at least in these large courses, were paying top dollar for what they effectively turned into an non-interactive online class. Every week, the university would require me to have office hours, which I was happy to keep. And for probably 90% of those minutes, I was just hanging out by myself. Point being…when your kids do get to college next year and beyond, check in on them. Communicate your expectation that they attend their classes. Many of them are not going to class, working toward the test only, literally only renting their online textbooks for the few days preceding the final, and missing opportunities as a result. I used to wonder what parents knew of what their students were doing…
My sister-in-law is on the faculty of a top-10 LAC and tells me that her students today are also having major mental health problems, more so than a decade ago. She said it used to be unheard of for a student to require a leave for mental health problems, and now she gets one or more every single semester. I saw an uptick as well in students being granted institutional special accommodations for their tests and deadlines. I am not suggesting these were not valid and important needs – just that they became more common over time, for whatever reason. These trends should be concerning to all of us as parents of college-bound students, many of whom are very high stats and thus highly motivated to succeed.
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Sorry I can’t be of any help.