I graduated early in the Triassic period (okay, it was 1975) and now I’m teaching college, and it seems that students feel much more free to let loose with a good old screed about how HAAAARD this exam is, or how UNFAAAAIR my grading curve is, or how much WORRRRRK I ask them to do, etc. Now of course I’m a crazy old loon, that goes without saying, and of course I remember being a perfect student (for a lazy, radical, dopepuffing knowitall) but it seems to me that, even given that, I would have been just plain embarrassed to allow a single professor (much less God and everybody) hearing me bitch. It would be like admitting, “Hey, I’m a gigantic doofus who can’t cut it in academe the way everyone else apparantly can” (which was true, but to say it out loud?)
How much of this is me being an old fart, and how much of it is really a change in the mores of college students over the last 30 years?
I doubt students have changed much. Most of this is just you viewing things from a different perspective now. When you were a student, you knew what your behavior was and maybe got snapshots of what other people bitched about from time to time but that was not a good sample of how much bitching people were doing after class or during office hours with the teacher etc.
Now, those types of complaints are directed to you and you get a much better perspective about how much bitching students are really doing. Make sense?
I wish there were some other way to phrase this question (try leaving yourself out of it, jackass!) so that we could GD it rather than IMHO it. I mean, I understand how some folks think it’s me and others think it’s a generational thing, and I don’t need to run a poll to tell me that. How about “What evidence exists to support the claim that today’s collee students are whinier and more self-entitled than previous generations?” Anyone want to suggest some tweaks before I try posting another GD topic? Or is this doomed to get bounced back to IMHO?
I’m 38 and back in college as a student…and I think they are a bunch of whiners.
The first time around I can’t remember anyone ever whining about homework, tests, how difficult the coursework was - not to the professor! We whined to each other. We spoke with the professor, individually (or maybe a small group), expressing our concerns very rarely.
This time around we have to spend 10 minutes in each small class section in a whine session (I almost wish I were back in a school with huge lecture halls). “You didn’t show us how to do that in class.” “How were we supposed to know.” “The midterm was too hard.” “You expect us to know that?!”
The difference may be the college. I formerly went to the University of Minnesota. I’m now going to Metropolitan State University (Brainiac4 thinks it should be the school from a comic book), which specializes in night school. But I suspect its more generational than school based. (But it isn’t which side of the desk I’m on).
There are certainly differences in me as well. First time around I was lucky if I read the material once. I’m halfway through my Econ book for next semester. So I possibly have less patience for the unprepared (which I was last time) - and I find the unprepared who then whine about how unfair it is that they are being expected to be prepared really annoying.
I think that those in my day were whiny, though not as whiny as the people I went to high school with. Too many people complained about having too much homework to do extracurricular activities. I never had a problem.
Then again, I saw far more extensions happen during college than happened during high school. I took one extension–one!–during college, and that was because they changed my appointment date for the GRE. It was, if I recall correctly, an extension of less than 24 hours. I knew people who would regularly ask for extensions on papers in the honors college with no medical excuse. Gah.
Some whine, some don’t. In your position, you’re likely to notice the complainers far more than those that are quietly getting on with things. And as those who don’t whine are probably those more likely to eventually end up on your side of the desk, you and your colleagues probably never whined yourselves.
I certainly don’t whine to teachers. But complaining about one’s workload is pretty standard - I don’t think there’s the implication that it’s unfair, it’s more that to complain is to get some kind of acknowledgement that you are indeed working hard.
Its interesting. My last college years were 1984-1988. Some people worked and went to school, or played sports, or had outside of school lives. I only remember one guy complaining that the work load was unfair - he was a U of M baseball player, it was baseball season, and it was “unfair - he couldn’t possibly do all the work assigned while playing baseball.” The prof told him he’d need to get his priorities in order, since if she failed him, he wouldn’t play baseball next year at all, and that his baseball schedule was not her problem.
This last semester (my first semester back) I heard a lot of “unfair.” It was “unfair” that a professor would expect you to get 20 Algebra problems worked over a week when you worked full time. It was unfair that questions showed up on the test that weren’t on the homework. I think I eventually figured out the plan…if we only did five homework problems a week, and then those problems showed up on the test - it would be fair and easy. But possibly the big difference was actually the professors - where my former profs would have dismissed this complaining, this semester’s profs really tried to address these concerns - which lead to more whining (and much less learning).
I graduated from college in 1985. I have a brother who teaches math at the same university. He swears the whining is up dramatically over twenty years ago. I know this could be due to the aforementioned ‘perspective’ issue.
But there’s something else too: with the exception of really elite colleges, most schools are trying, for profit reasons, to max out enrollment. This changes the student-teacher hierarchy into one where the student ‘owns the process’. (My brother sometimes jokingly refers to his ‘customers’).
Today, my brother regularly has to deal with people who (after whining to him) go to the department chairman and simply negotiate a better grade. And you know what? It often works. That’s what’s different today.
Twenty years ago, professors were judge, jury and executioner. I’m not defending this as a perfect system, but it definitely ain’t the case today. And students’ attitudes have changed accordingly.
**Another College instructor checking in here: ** I think there is a major difference between those who are vocal about whining and those who aren’t. I must say I have had a few freshmen who have whined on occasion, but by in large they stay pretty quiet. All of them know what to expect because I hand how a disgustingly detailed syllabus, and we have study guides each week.
I think the problem has something to do with what Dangerosa said. Many state schools are maximizing their enrollments, and admissions are sky-rocketing. I work for a private school, so we do not have a surplus by any means of students entering each fall. We try and remain competitive through the programs we offer, and this tends to attract - more or less - students who want to be here. And I believe this in turn cuts down on whining.
As for the OP, I’m 35 and I certainly see your point about there being a difference from students of the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s to students of today. Students today are more plugged in if you will, and tend to want things done now, now, now…patience has become pass…
At the school where I was an undergrad, there was a marked difference between whining of the “oh, this is too much reading / this is too hard” sort, which was taken no more seriously than “aww fuck, man, it’s raining, why does it have to be raining”, and whining about some sort of unfair bias on the instructor’s part. If your papers received drastically different marks depending on whether you parroted the professor’s pet political perspectives or for that matter tastes in wine or literature or whatever, that could generate serious feelings of affront. So could any sense that personal or categorical bias was causing some students to get a free ride or to get bad grades no matter what they did.
It certainly wasn’t uncommon to hear a class groan when a paper was assigned.
There were also some students I regarded as ridiculously spoiled, who didn’t whine so much as they demanded: “I paid my tuition and I came to this class and you owe me at least a B+”. Or (to the teaching assistant): “I didn’t come here to drill on stuff or listen to you lecture. Just tell me what I have to memorize to get a good grade on this test.”
Mostly they weren’t taken much more seriously than folks complaining about the weather.
28-year-old grad student, here. I get the impression that there is a bit of a generation gap between me and my students (who are only ten years younger) with regard to attitudes about grading. More and more, I get the vibe from them that they feel entitled to an A simply for completing the assignment, and consider anything less (sometimes even an A-) unacceptable. When I was an undergrad, I remember taking it for granted that merely doing what you were told would earn you a B at best; that an assignment had to be exceptionally good to score an A-; and that a flat A meant that your work was seriously brilliant.
However, I’m willing to believe there are plenty of other factors at work (I teach at a large state university now, but attended a smaller and more academically competitive college as an undergrad; I grew up in a different state where the public schools had more rigorous standards than the ones here; students may be more likely to whine to a young, female grad student than a full professor, etc.) And truth be told, I’m not sure the students’ heightened expectations these days are entirely bad. (I also went through my undergrad years expecting my professors to be arbitrary old cranks, and while I didn’t particularly mind since most of them were also wonderful teachers, I can see how such an environment might be difficult to cope with for a student more grade-focused than I was.)
One of the students in class was shocked! shocked I tell you! to discover his grade would be dropped by one grade letter for turning in an assignment a week late.
Another was amazed to learn that turning up in class each week, but not bothering to do homework or pass tests, was not adequate for a C.
Both spend much valuable class time arguing with the instructor over these policies - both were going to take their complaints to the department head.
Hmph! Complaining about your students whining, eh? Need I remind you that they are paying your salary?
Ahdon’tkillmeit’sajoke!
I would have to say, despite having little objective experience, that there’s too much whining and too much concession. I expected that going into even junior college, the instructors wouldn’t take excuses, would expect us to think on our feet. I had one instructor that was a bit harsh - barked a student out of a class for being 10 minutes late - but otherwise they adhered to the policies written out on the syllabus.
Now I’m in the UC system, and I’m surprised that anyone could complain with all the support and hand-holding I’m being offered. My JC wasn’t nearly this supportive, but I heard less (public) complaining there.
That said, I’ve still whined - though not to the teacher; that’s typically a rude thing to do in my opinion - about not rounding grades (an 89.99 is an A, c’mon! ) and fitting to a curve (in objective subjects). But beyond that, hey, a late assignment is a late assignment, and I’ve counted enough zeroes to understand why “dead” is in deadline - and if a professor states a harsh policy, well, it’s up to me to deal with it or find another professor.
39 year old undergrad here. Not much to add but my observations. When I first went to school in the mid-80s, I worked my butt off (or so it felt) for 3.5 GPAs. I was lucky enough to not have to work, but, as a music major, I had to practice 40 hours a week anyway. I can’t recall a student ever pleading “just this one time”. I remember begging one professor to let me turn in my term paper one day late because of food poisoning.
Now, I work full-time, go to school full-time, and as a CS major (I know, I know) spend my sleeping hours coding (when not scolding the kid, or being scolded by the wife). But, I’m surprised at how easy the work seems. Yea, I still work my butt off, but the hows and whys are so much easier to grasp than 5000 years ago. I’m doing at least a 3.5. Yet, I see some other students begging and pleading and hand wringing, with all kinds of excuses. Not alot, just some. And they get away with it.
I wonder if it’s because 1) the students these days really do have things harder than when I was their age, 2) they’ve been PC’d into a mediocre state of stupor, 3) they’re in a mediocre state of stupor because of their age, and I’m just more focused than I was at their age, or 4) the professors are more approachable and/or less respected than they were, or 5) some combination of the above.
