"...Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn..."

sakky · June 5, 2011, 4:20am

*"…in the past few generations, **the imagery and rhetoric of academic marketing have cultivated a belief that college will be, if not decadent, at least primarily recreational: social activities, sporting events, and travel. Along the way, there may be some elective cultural enrichment and surely some preprofessional training and internships, the result of which will be access to middle-class careers. **College brochures and Web sites may mention academic rankings, but students probably won’t read anything about expectations of rigor and hard work: On the contrary, “world-renowned professors” will provide you with a “world-class education.” Increasingly, students are buying an “experience” instead of earning an education, and, in the competition to attract customers, that’s what’s colleges are selling

…Students increasingly are pressured to go to college not because they want to learn (much less become prepared for the duties of citizenship), but because they and their parents believeperhaps rightlythat not going will exclude them from middle-class jobs. At the same time, much of the academic program, particularly general education, seems disconnected from the practical skills needed to secure those jobs. In order to maintain that Potemkin Village, **faculty members and students have entered into a “disengagement compact,” in which they place fewer demands on each other so that other interestsresearch for the professor and social activities for the studentscan be pursued with fewer distractions. Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn.**That results in the cultivation of students’ instincts, guided by checklist rubrics, for doing the least amount of work necessary to receive the desired level of distinction, in a context in which the A- is the new C. **Even the brightest students have doubts about whether they should work toward genuine accomplishment if they’re getting the same A as someone who barely tries. **

…As academic expectations have decreased, social programming and extracurricular activities have expanded to fill more than the available time. That is particularly the case for residential students, for whom the possibility of social isolation is a source of great anxiety. Moreover, the status hierarchies of college come primarily from nonacademic activities that often translate directly into career opportunities after graduation through the power of alumni networks. For those reasons, it is not uncommon for students to expect to be formally excused from a substantial portion of scheduled classes in order to participate in some nonacademic activity. In some respects, that is a positive sign, because muchperhaps mostof the achievement to which students direct their energies is now in activities (like sports) where competition is the norm, excuses are not accepted, and the authority of experts has been preserved. **Excessive involvement with academic pursuitsbeyond what is required to earn unexceptionally high gradeshas become a marker of low status, social isolation, and lack of orientation toward the most important way that postgraduation success is achieved, via networking and connections in which professors do not figure prominently **.

…A lot of students have worked extraordinarily hard to get into the “right” kind of college, only to wonder what all the hype was about. The common experience is that getting admitted is the most exhausting part. After that, the struggle mainly is financial. But at the major universities, most professors are too busy to care about individual students, and it is easy to become lost amid a sea of equally disenchanted undergraduates looking for some kind of purposeand not finding it.*

[A</a> Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part 2 - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/A-Perfect-Storm-in/126969/]A”>http://chronicle.com/article/A-Perfect-Storm-in/126969/)

coureur · June 5, 2011, 12:44pm

Sakky - what’s with all the anti-education threads (least five just today)? Did you wake up this morning and decide that your college education hasn’t been of any value?

sakky · June 5, 2011, 8:06pm

I believe these are interesting topics that deserve discussion. It is an open question as to whether higher education is indeed a net benefit to society, after incorporating all of its costs, not least of which are the opportunity costs of young people being removed from the workforce and professors being forced to spend much of their time producing publications - many (probably most) of dubious value - in order to maintain their jobs.

Besides, why do you care so much about what I choose to post? I don’t bother you about what you choose to post. People should be allowed to post whatever they want without being hassled.

coureur · June 5, 2011, 10:34pm

My apologies if you felt “hassled.” That was not my intention. You can, of course, put up any post you want that falls within CC’s rules. It’s just that you are a well-known CC denizen of long-time residence and with many thousands of posts about college. When there is a sudden shift one day or a sudden obsession, especially one that could be construed as a very negative campaign toward higher education, it’s a curious development to say the least.

But hey, don’t let me slow you down. Carry on. Go ahead and pull down the entire higher educational edifice - if you think you can.

sakky · June 6, 2011, 8:17pm

I don’t think there was any sudden shift - or indeed, any shift at all.

For example, I’ve written numerous posts in the past questioning the overall value-add of higher education to society at large. Let’s face it - there are a lot of college students who, frankly, are intellectually unmotivated, are far more interested in the partying/drinking/social environment of school than in the academics, and may not even understand why they are even there at all. Surely most us of can think of somebody they knew in college who fit this description. Taking this discussion to a larger political context, during the 2004 Presidential election, both George W. Bush and John Kerry openly admitted that they were unmotivated students while at Yale, with Bush freely joking about his poor grades and frat-boy antics, and Kerry conceding that he had spent more time learning how to fly airplanes than on his studies (and actually graduated with a worse GPA than Bush did).

Bush and Kerry both were scions of rich families, so they could easily afford to pay for what basically amounted to a 4-year club membership & social experience. But it is indeed an open question as to whether families of less means ought to pay for their children to attend college, if they are as unmotivated as many current students are, or if the college in question is more (in)famous for its partying atmosphere than its educational experience. It is also a legitimate question to ask whether society at large should continue to support such a system, particularly at a time of constrained resources and burgeoning national debt.

It is also an open question as to what value does much of the research - which consumes most of the time of professors at research universities - provide to society. The truth is, the vast majority of academic publications are barely read by anybody, not even by other academics, and therefore contribute little if anything to our state of knowledge. Yet it is research that largely determines hiring and promotions to tenure at those universities. Indeed, much research may actually serve to ■■■■■■ our development of knowledge, as if somebody erroneously theorizes that X causes Y, then other researchers then have to spend extra time demonstrating that X does not in fact cause Y, and even so, people will often times still continue to cite the original theory that X causes Y. {The social sciences are particularly notorious for rarely being able to definitively reject any former theories, which means that old theories continue to linger seemingly impervious to empirical evidence.}

But I have to take issue with the notion that I have ‘shifted’ in any way. Indeed, I’ve been surfacing these very issues for years.

coureur · June 7, 2011, 3:00pm

So Bush and Kerry were rich kids who fifty years ago didn’t study very hard? Great, but what does that prove about college kids today, especially the vast majority of kids who are not from rich families?

And some college kids drink and/or flunk out? I’m shocked, shocked that there is drinking going on in this establishment!

And I love it how the people who already have the benefit of a good college education are sometimes so eager to yank it away from those who don’t. It’s so easy for you (Berkeley) or Thiel (Stanford) to sit atop your own educational advantages and opportunities and proclaim it’s a waste to society for others to pursue them for themselves.

DunninLA · June 7, 2011, 5:10pm

I thought Sakky was Michigan…oh well.

Coureur, these are indeed important points. I note that our American system of collegiate education is very different from that used in other developed countries, and that difference begs discussion about which system better serves its constituents.

Keep posting Sakky. I don’t have the time or inclination to chase down these topics but appreciate you and others that do the legwork and present these questions efficiently to me.

Assuming that most professors do pretend to teach, and most students do pretend to learn, I wonder what would happen if professors took the time to engage students individually, within or without class? Would the students reciprocate, or would the professor be casting seeds upon hard soil? Likewise, if professors would be approached by engaged and curious students, would they reciprocate with mentoring?

coureur · June 8, 2011, 12:45am

It isn’t perfect, but based on both the flood of foreign students constantly trying to get into US colleges and all the various international rankings of schools which are invariably heavily dominated by US colleges, our American system of collegiate education must be doing something right.

Sure, post away. Just don’t be too surprised when many people don’t take very seriously the anti-college campaigns of people who already enjoy the benefits of degree(s) from high-end colleges. The old “Do as I say and not as I do” line never was a convincing argument.

tenisghs · June 8, 2011, 12:16pm

sakky overlooked a crucial paragraph about the flawed faculty system. I highlight it below:

Alienation from professors. Many students cannot imagine going to speak with a professor in his or her office. At most universities, a student is likely to be unknown to the professor and would expect to feel like a nuisance, a distraction from more important work. In addition, many students arrive believing that professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are mostly political radicals who will try to convert them to some outlandish belief system from another era. (It doesn’t help that professors are now so much older, on average, than their students; ironically, the baby boomers now preside over the widest generation gap academe has ever seen.) It leads to the suspicion among students that any criticism of their work that is not objective (2+2=4) might be based on some kind of political or personal bias. At the same time, students recognize that most of the teachers with whom they have more personal contact—graduate students, adjuncts, and other part-timers—are not well regarded by their institutions. Their lack of income, benefits, and job security are an insidious advertisement for the low status of some kinds of learning. Moreover, transient faculty members can’t help your career, since they may not be around next year and their recommendations carry little weight.

Another section is about the growing disenchantment and fear among college students:

Students feeling disillusioned, bored, apathetic, scared, and trapped. Perhaps the most memorable response I received to the previous column was from a college junior who recalled that she “really thought college would be an incredible experience. … I expected a series of heated debates in class, and meeting for coffee to discuss classroom topics. But all I hear is ‘I’m bored’ and ‘I just don’t care.’” A lot of students have worked extraordinarily hard to get into the “right” kind of college, only to wonder what all the hype was about. The common experience is that getting admitted is the most exhausting part. After that, the struggle mainly is financial. But at the major universities, most professors are too busy to care about individual students, and it is easy to become lost amid a sea of equally disenchanted undergraduates looking for some kind of purpose—and not finding it.

barrons · June 8, 2011, 12:45pm

How can today’s students expect lots of great face to face discussion when most spend all their time ignoring each other (and everyone else) in person and just text and facebook all day and night?? Just like disintermediation in econ, we now have discommunication.

katliamom · June 8, 2011, 2:32pm

LOL, barrons.

tenisighs, if a student “cannot imagine” going to see a professor – how is that anyone’s fault but the student’s? Fact is professors are REQUIRED to hold office hours and a vast majority WELCOME their students. I went to a ginormous university and had one-on-one conversations with every faculty member I sought out. Same is possible - and encouraged - today. That some kids don’t have either the desire, the wherewithal, or the social skills to do so speaks volumes about them. Not about the educational possibilities at their school.

arcadefire1027 · June 8, 2011, 2:49pm

LOL at Barrons. You’re out of touch with reality if you think that people “ignore” each other just because they spend time online.

Man, this thread sure is apocalyptic. Everything in this article is exaggerated ten-fold. Maybe I’m just sheltered, because I certainly don’t see this in my program at all (computer science). To the contrary, pretty much everyone recommends taking the hardest teacher here (Eggert) because of how much you’ll learn.

barrons · June 8, 2011, 3:11pm

What I have heard is that the vast majority of students today never come to the office hours and prefer to use email and other non-contact forms of communication. I see much the same thing where groups of students at a coffee shop are sitting around the same table and everyone is on their electronic devices rather than talking out loud. Sure it’s a little exaggeration but when you average a couple 100 texts a day you have little time for actual talking.

warblersrule · June 8, 2011, 3:36pm

Nonsense. Professors can present themselves as being either accessible or distant, and far too many do the latter. It’s an unfortunate reality that many professors consider students, particularly undergraduates, to be nuisances and don’t really bother to hide that opinion.

For example, many professors don’t bother to post office hours on their syllabi, office doors, or websites. Alternately, they may choose to leave their doors shut during office hours; a student is much less likely to knock than to approach a professor with an open door. Some respond within hours to email inquiries; others take days or even weeks to respond. Some hang out after class to answer questions and discuss things with interested students; others practically stampede their students to get out after the lecture. It’s also minor types of behavior that intimidate students - checking one’s watch during the conversation, typing at the computer while talking, etc. It’s really quite common. I had one student in my class who preferred to bring her questions to me after the professor interrupted her in office hours to make a phone call. :eek: My own advisor once kicked me out so that he could prepare for an interview with the History Channel he was having that afternoon - understandable but intimidating for many students. I’ve also noticed that students are far more likely to approach professors with whom they’ve interacted in class; students who file into an auditorium and have to sit down and scribble frantically for an hour as a professor pontificates are much less likely to be proactive in pursuing out of class discussion.

Surprisingly, it’s not always limited to undergraduates. I heard from a former graduate student at Penn (now a professor at another Ivy) that graduate students in his program met with their advisors once every two or three weeks, if that. Heck, one of my own professors at a school I’ve attended once described mentoring three PhD students as a burden. This intimidation is mocked by [PhD</a> Comics](<a href=“http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PFER6X23HUY/SIzyufb4NqI/AAAAAAAAAG8/sbQ7FM2HrLI/s400/1.gif]PhD”>http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PFER6X23HUY/SIzyufb4NqI/AAAAAAAAAG8/sbQ7FM2HrLI/s400/1.gif), among others.

sakky · June 8, 2011, 4:56pm

Bush and Kerry just happen to be famous examples (and, yes, famous people tend to be rich). I don’t think it is particularly specific to the rich: plenty of poor and middle-classed students also, frankly, do not study very hard either. Consider Johnny Lechner, who started college in 1994, and as far as I can tell, is still there but still hasn’t graduated. I doubt that he’s rich.

[Johnny</a> Lechner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Lechner]Johnny”>Johnny Lechner - Wikipedia)

I agree that that is not shocking - but ironically, that is probably the most shocking aspect of it all. We as a society have become accustomed to the notion that for many people, college is largely a social experience rather than an academic one. Many students are, sadly, not particularly interested in learning. Certain schools are infamous for their party environments. What is shocking and sad is that we as society have accepted this as the status quo.

Well, actually I would argue that it is precisely those who have the (supposed) benefits of a college education who are the most credible about speaking to its flaws. After all, coureur, think about what you would say to somebody who never went to college when then advised others not to do so. The natural counterargument would then be that that person never went to college and so would naturally not understand what the benefits of the college experience are - i.e.: “I love it when people who never went to college and therefore don’t know anything about it are advising others about how not to reap the (supposed) benefits of college.” Be honest coureur, you know that you (or others) would advance this counterargument. Hence, regardless of whoever questions the value of college, a ready-made ad-hominem attack is waiting for to be sprung.

And besides, I don’t think Thiel (and certainly not I) is proposing that nobody should ever go to college. Thiel is offering $100k 2-year “scholarships” for budding entreprenuers, the winners of whom mostly comprise current students at elite colleges. What’s the worst that could happen? Once those 2 years have lapsed, those winners who startup firms had failed can just re-enroll at their schools. By a similar argument, Bill Gates & Mark Zuckerburg were risking little by dropping out of Harvard to start Microsoft/Facebook - if they had failed, they would have just returned to Harvard. Similarly, I have never proposed that nobody ever go to college. Those who are actually motivated to learn and develop themselves should absolutely do so. But those who are not motivated - which we can surely all agree are legion - and are just looking for a social experience may be better advised not to go to college. There are cheaper ways to party.

Generally speaking, foreign students are not coming to American colleges for the parties.

And besides, I don’t know that the notion of foreign students coming to US colleges is particularly meaningful, given the fact that foreigners of all ages are trying to come to the US via all sorts of mechanisms. The US is a rich country, with a social dynamic fostered by the immigrant experience, and many foreigners are attracted to the country for the economic and political opportunities. US colleges just happens to be a well-established conduit for them to arrive. {I can think of numerous foreign students who, while wanting diplomas, were even more interested in obtaining green cards.}

Nobody disputes that the US has the best higher education research infrastructure - which generally comprise the bulk of the rankings, either explicitly or implicitly (i.e. through “peer ratings”, which are generally proxies for research).

Nevertheless, it is an open question as to how much benefit does research accrue to the average undergraduate who - let’s be honest - is never going to become a researcher himself. What does the fact that a university may discover a new fundamental particle have to do with the typical undergrad who is struggling to learn basic physics? {Or that he may not even be trying to learn at all, but is rather spending the bulk of his time socializing and partying?}

Would you find the line: “I never did it and so I don’t really know about it, but you should nevertheless take my word that you shouldn’t do it either” to be a more convincing argument?

It seems to me that you wouldn’t be convinced no matter who said it, as you would simply spring a convenient ad-hominem attack in either case. But if that’s the case, then you should just admit that you’re never going to be convinced no matter who says it, and we wouldn’t have to waste time trying.

DunninLA · June 8, 2011, 5:16pm

My post and Sakky’s as well refer to the undergraduate experience, not the masters/Ph.D. experience which drives the rankings of public research institutions, and some very large private research institutions.

coureur · June 8, 2011, 7:30pm

I’m reminded of that C&W song “Who are You Going to Believe, Me or Your Own Lying Eyes?”

I’ve seen too many instances too vividly with my own eyes of the benefits, both personal and professional, of going to college and getting a degree, as well as the penalties and disadvantages of not having an education, to ever recommend to someone who appears to be mentally capable of college-level work to not go.

Is college education perfect? Of course not. But a dozen articles complaining about lazy students or professors who spend time researching arcane topics do not invalidate the obvious value of college education - both to individuals and to the larger society.

sakky · June 8, 2011, 9:01pm

Encapsulated within that statement is a key assumption - that the student in question will indeed actually graduate. The truth of the matter is that a large percentage of college students never actually graduate. While obviously some such as Bill Gates or Zuckerburg leave not because of any academic problems but because they found something far more important to do, others leave because of poor grades and/or general lack of intellectual motivation. These are the students who tend not to even understand why they were even in college in the first place. Yet they nevertheless had to pay the tuition and opportunity cost of attending. Let’s face it - these students probably would have been better off had they never gone to college at all but had instead entered the workforce directly from high school.

And even of those who did graduate, many did so via, frankly, creampuff majors that demanded little effort. Many students literally majored in Leisure Studies (yes, that is indeed an official major at some schools and not just a euphemism for a 4-year social experience). Again, one has to compare the value-add - such as it is - of such a degree to the expense required to obtain it.

But again, to be clear, I don’t think Thiel or anybody else is advocating that everybody should quit college to do nothing. Thiel is offering a scholarship for students who are willing to forgo college for 2 years in order to start a promising business venture. Obviously if you don’t have a promising venture in mind, or a similarly lucrative opportunity, then perhaps you should attend college, again presuming that you actually are motivated to be there.

Again, I’m not entirely sure that college is valuable to society as a whole, after taking into account all of the greater costs associated with college, such as the billions of dollars of tax breaks that colleges enjoy as tax-exempt organizations (for example, why should “for-profit” colleges be taxed, but not traditional colleges?), and the monumental quantities of the most highly educated human capital in the world who work as faculty and staff at universities who might instead have been more productively employed in other activities. {For example, instead of having highly educated and erudite PhD holders in humanities perpetually arguing over the subtext of works of literature for their entire careers, why not have more of them actually write some new works of literature themselves? Perhaps ironically, the vast majority of the great works of literature even today are not written by holders of humanities PhD’s. Seems to me that humanities academia is devoted towards arguing about the calculation of value provided by the actual creators of literature rather than creating any such value themselves.}

As far as the individual is concerned, much (arguably most) of the “value” provided by education is - as Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence has argued - is driven by labor market signaling. Intelligent and hard-working people graduate from college simply as a way to signal their abilities to employers. Hence, if you don’t graduate from college, then employers take that as a negative signal that perhaps you’re not intelligent or hard-working. The market equilibrium point would then be that everybody who is intelligent and hard-working would graduate from college as no one individual dares not to conform to the pressures of the labor market. You attend college and graduate solely because your labor market competitors are attending college and graduating - an academic “arms race”.

But that’s an enormously wasteful equilibrium point for society, as individuals continue to spend on the arms race to pursue ever more costly methods to signal to the market. The analogy would be male birds expending ever-increasing amounts of thermodynamic energy to grow more impressive (but ultimately useless) plumages solely to attract mates. Hence, what - as Thiel has proposed - if we move the market to a different equilibrium point where intelligence and work ethic were not correlated with college degrees? In such a world, employers would dispense with using college degrees as a screening device. The arms race would end; employers would then have to evaluate candidates and make hiring decisions based on actual skills, rather than using colleges as an outsourced HR screen.

Now, to be clear, I am not as extreme as Spence. I certainly agree that certain college activities probably do confer value-add to society. But not all of its activities do, and not all individuals benefit. It is therefore entirely legitimate to ask what college activities do add value, and which individuals are able to derive value from college.

katliamom · June 8, 2011, 9:16pm

“Nonsense. Professors can present themselves as being either accessible or distant, and far too many do the latter. It’s an unfortunate reality that many professors consider students, particularly undergraduates, to be nuisances and don’t really bother to hide that opinion.”

Warblers86, I certainly hope that’s not the case at UCLA, where apparently you’re studying/teaching. It’s certainly NOT the case at the university from which my daughter just graduated; it’s not the case at the university my son attends, nor at the university where my husband taught and was dean at for many a year. I repeat: professors are REQUIRED to hold office hours and, unless it’s an emergency, actually be there for them. Students who are repeatedly unable to meet with their professor are certainly entitled to voice their concern to the department office. Any school where that is not the case is highly suspect as an institution of learning.

sakky · June 8, 2011, 11:25pm

One strategy that professors sometimes leverage is to deliberately hold office hours at a time when they know that their students cannot attend, for example, at the exact same time as as another class that the students who are in a program with a regimented set of courses that are forced to be taken simultaneously - a not uncommon occurrence in, say, engineering. The professor can then always pull the excuse that that is the ‘only’ time in his busy research schedule that he could reserve for office hours, surely knowing full well that few if any students will ever be able to attend.

Another ‘strategy’ is that professors may hold (undergraduate) office hours at the exact same time as their graduate student advising. Hence, while they may be physically located in their offices during those office hours, they are clearly providing priority to their graduate students, rarely allowing any undergraduates to get a word in edgewise.

And then what? If the professor in question has tenure then the department can literally do nothing. Tenure makes you effectively unfireable. Even if the professor doesn’t have tenure, but nevertheless is likely to obtain tenure perhaps because of an impressive research agenda, then the department is also likely to do nothing.

Which was the main thrust of the Chron article that instigated this thread in the first place. Many schools, frankly, are not primarily institutions of learning, but rather institutions of research. They exist first and foremost to serve the interests of the faculty rather than the students, and certainly not the undergraduate students. And, with apologies to Warblers86, I would strongly suspect that UCLA - being a world-class research university - belongs in this category. Let’s be perfectly honest: plenty of professors at UCLA and other top research universities do not really care about teaching undergraduates.

"...Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn..."

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