Yes, there’s definitely more whining nowadays! If an exam is not open book/take home, the fuss these kids kick up is unbelievable. Office hours are ignored until the week before an exam/paper. I remember hanging out in my professor’s offices throughout the year back in my college days. It’s not just undergraduates, graduate students never seem to have anything positive to say about their programs.
My personal theory that there’s a whole generation of kids out there who don’t know how to shut up and deal plus academia has been bashed a lot in the press and rankings have become so competitive lately so students want more bang for their buck.
In my experience - and let me cop to the fact that I’m all of 22 with a BA that’s still hot from being pressed in June, so this is my age group and I have what may be an evident bias - it’s not that college kids as a whole whine a lot or have ridiculous senses of entitlement, but that the ones who DO whine or feel entitled are really pretty damn insufferable.
The best example was a frightfully bright girl who was in my Political Science program and is destined for greatness, aside from the fact that she can be a bitch on wheels. We were looking at the finals schedule, and because a particular class was in the Philosophy department and was touchy-feely even by the PHI department’s standards, and it was the last day of the finals period in the last slot, she just assumed it was going to be a non-final or a take-home. When the professor announced the exam, she shouted, “THAT’S SUCH BULLSHIT!” at the top of her lungs and proceeded to delay the class about 15 minutes trying to argue him out of having a final because she wanted to buy plane tickets.
And then there’s the fellow who was in another one of PSC classes. The professor had assigned a 10-15 page final paper… oddly, he had the due date on the second-to-last Monday of the semester, with a promininent “NO EXTENSIONS” provision. I think the last day of classes was Monday the 15th, so it was due Monday the 8th. When I realized that, I pulled an all-nighter and managed to write one of my favorite papers ever. On Monday the 15th, this guy showed up, handed the paper to the prof after class, and started to walk away.
“Wait!” the prof said. “Do you have a medical excuse, or some evidence?”
“Nope.” And he walked out the door.
As it turned out, the paper was poorly plagiarized anyway, but I would have been tempted to take out a red pen, write “F” on it and hand it back.
please please please don’t dig up any of my old posts about my TAs
I’ve found radically different levels of whining from one school to another.
I TAed at an Ivy League school, and the whining was unbelievable. Most of it seemed to spring from a sense of entitlement: I worked hard to get into a school, and goddamnit, I deserve an A just for being here. I’m not just talking about whining specifically to me as a TA, but also whining I overheard, whining directed at professors, etc. Most of it was penny-ante point-grubbing and must-get-an-A-itis, as opposed to “this is too hard,” possibly because there’s a certain machismo all wrapped up around going to a “hard” school.
Now I teach at a smaller private school that charges roughly the same tuition, and there is much less whining. Slightly more “the exams are too hard”, and much, much less “I think my essay deserves an A-, not a B+, because I worked weally weally hawd on it. And if you do not give me an A I will cwy and call my pawents.” Much less cheating here, too, thank goodness.
It’s not an economic difference, so I think it’s more a “student culture” difference. The different schools attract students with different goals and attitudes.
Bias check: I am a 38 year-old teacher.
The most startling form of whining has been the development of the idea that grades are negotiable.
Way back when, my undergrad classmates and I would never…
…go to a prof and say “I got a B- in you class; can you make that a B+?”
…say “But I have to have a B to maintain my athletic eligibility/scholarship/financial aid/whatever!” (Well, if so much was riding on your grade for this class, why didn’t you show up and do the work?)
…cry over a B. “Why do you hate me so much?!? This is such a TERRIBLE grade!!!”
…assume that showing up for most of the class meetings and doing the work meant at least a B. (I’d say that those are the minimal competencies and should earn you a C).
…figure that if we got a grade that we didn’t like that we could rewrite the paper for a higher grade.
[/old fart mode off]
I’ve seen whining with a reason and without. Unfortunately, I see far too much of the second type amongst my peers. I can see complaining about the professor who cancelled 1/4 of the classes without a backup so he could watch baseball, or the one who will automatically fail you if you miss even one class for any reason. But I routinely hear people complain because “we have to do 5 hours of observation this semester.” In my opinion, there should be much more observation required, and no, writing up one page on it is not a back-breaking assignment.
If this is the caliber of some of the people becoming our teachers, I fear for the next generation. These are the people that give us education majors a bad name.
Oh, there’s definitely more whining now, because many of these students were raised with a tremendous sense of entitlement; they were catered to for so many years that they expect this treatment to continue in college.
Manatee: I know what I’m in for tomorrow morning. I’ve got two little darlings who cannot pass the class even if they ace the final because they were absent or extremely late so many damn times that they lost a lot of points; they never had conferences on their research papers, which didn’t turn out well; they never did any peer editing to get another point; they never did a rewrite to try to boost their grade a bit.
But you know what they’re going to say: “But I reaaallllyyyy neeeed to passsss this classsss.”
Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered the “lessons” that you and I and the other profs were supposed to have learned in that Pit thread: that we are supposed to make our customers happy, the customers are always right, and they paid fees to take the class and dammit, they “deserve” a passing grade!
Duh. Silly me. How soon I forget.
I don’t waaaaaaaaaaaaaaant to go to claaaaaaaaaaaass 
Life suuuuuuuuuucks.
I haaaaaaaaate it.
Some of the people who think like that were raised in families where anything but 4.0 meant “get back on the short bus where you belong.” One girl in an AP class with me in high school tried to track down and hurt the person who had gotten two points higher than her in the midterm because it meant she wasn’t the best one in the class. :eek: I lived in fear of her for the rest of the year because she really would have done something horrible had she ever known.
It’s sad to see people think their entire self-worth is wrapped up in that 4.0.
They’re not whiny, you’re just evil and bent on making their lives miserable*.
Doh. Ask me again when I’m not pissed off that one of my finals was ridiculously badly written and vague, and as a result dragged my grade down a whole letter.
*No, I wasn’t being serious. Unless you’re a math professor, then it’s just a given.
Last spring, a favorite Lit professor of mine was coming up for review for tenure. Why is he my favorite? Because he made his students work. Hard. And he gave a speech at the beginning of the class…you know the one…“Cs are average. As are exceptional. You have to do a truly exceptional job to get an A in my class.” And bless him, he meant it. He didn’t care about excuses and he did not try to be friendly with his students–he’s there to lecture, not to make life-long buddies or cater to their whims.
So anyway, when review time came, they interviewed all the students in his Shakespeare class (he’s the most famous Shakespeare scholar I know… and the only one…) and they all bitched about him. I’m sure you can imagine what they had to say. He got such negative reviews that he was denied tenure and he’s coming up for review again in May.
Incidently, I always get As in his class and I’ve never had a problem…because he’s doing his job damnit. I also wrote a letter last year to the committee to support him.
But this semester, he’s changed. Radically. In ways I don’t like. He’s essentially become what they demanded with their whining. I hate that so much, but what can he do? I hope once he gets his tenure this year and I hope he gets his personality back when he does.
I’ve developed an intense dislike for many of the people in my department. They do have a sense of entitlement. One student asked me if I got an A on my paper. I confirmed I did. He then muttered, “Prof X always gives A’s to girls…” and I rounded on him. I work my ass off for every A I get, and I really resent the people who can’t be arsed to even show up for class, and then dare to complain that any A is due to favoritism or whatever else.
What classes do you teach? I am a chemistry major and I would say 70% intend to go to graduate school for either a medical related degree (medicine, dental, pharmacy, vet) or a PhD in chemistry. In a different BA/BS program maybe only 10% of students intend to go to gradaute school and as a result only 10% have to worry about getting high marks. So the fact that people have to worry about maintaining a B+/A- average or higher to get into graduate school could be a large factor in whining. So could the fact that some majors attract people who pride themselves on their academic performance more than other majors.
Also I guess the fact that TV has brainwashed us into thinking that life is easy and we all deserve to be the best plays a role.
Overall I don’t see that much whining myself. I see tons and tons of confusion and wishes that things were made more clear, but not alot of whining.
At my school, most whining is done strictly out-of-classroom. But then again, this is the California State University system we’re talking about, which was specifically designed to maximize the FOPC (Fucking Overs Per Capita). We have a lot to whine about, mostly regarding administration, A+R and those mothermunging Gen Eds. But not individual classes - and certainly not in front of your professor!
And as a CSU teacher, I thank you for that mindset. Any way that you could spread it to my students? 
My cousin’s husband taught law, most recently about 5 years ago at a highly regarded school. He felt that the students wanted to be “spoon fed” and “babied.” I’m not sure whether he was mostly commenting on that particular school, or the generation thing.
We had one “major whiner” and several “minor whiners” in each of my classes of 30 students last semester. Talking to a girlfriend also taking classes, we’ve pretty much agreed that there is almost a mandatory role of “major whiner.” The major whiners job is to whine during class about the unfairness of the situation, about how much work needs to be done, about how difficult the coursework is, about how the prof didn’t lecture to the test, or how the textbook has a liberal/conservative/or just plain “I don’t agree with it” bias (particularly funny in Alegbra class - if you don’t agree with the theory being taught in College Alegbra you are either WAY overqualified for the class or really stupid, since this was watered down, no derivation, this is how you multiply exponent crap), and how a five page double spaced paper is unreasonable (I’ve written longer posts on the Dope). The major whiner may or may not be the first person to bring up “going to the department head about the quality of teaching in this course.”
And what is it with take home and open book finals? One of my instructors gave us an essay test - and provided the questions she was going to ask the week before! The other gave us take home tests - which about half the class worked on in teams (which you weren’t supposed to do). Then the instructor gave us extra credit questions to work on in class for the last session - just in case you didn’t do well on the take home final - 70% of the class walked out the door - most of them the ones scrambling for a C.
A random student whining story, as the Pit thread seems to have been thoroughly hijacked and I need some place to vent:
One of the requirements for my Brit Lit survey class is a five- to ten-minute oral presentation on some biographical / historical / literary terminology-related topic. This is pretty much a “gimme” assignment, one that I deliberately grade lightly in order to make up for the fact that I tend to be harder on written work. About all you need to do to earn a B is come prepared, do a modicum of research, and say something reasonably accurate and coherent about your topic.
So this student, I’ll call him X, signs up to do a presentation about the fabliau while we’re studying Chaucer, completely forgets about this fact and gives me an utterly blank look when I call on him to speak, and ends up delivering the presentation two days late. It is not a particularly good presentation. In fact, I get the strong impression that he’s reading from his sources without putting things into his own words or internalizing the material at all. I mention this in my comments when I e-mail the student his grade, which is a C.
X e-mails me back two months later to ask why he got a C on the presentation “other than the fact that it was late.” In this e-mail, he flatly denies that he was reading from his sources. Well, there isn’t much I can do to refute this based on my hastily scribbled notes from a two-months-old presentation. I settle for telling him that yes, his grade was a C because it WAS late, and if he’s seriously concerned about improving his grade in the class, he should concentrate on getting his work in on time. (By this point he has also turned in his first paper a week late.)
Fast-forward to the final, two days ago. One of the questions is “Define the term fabliau and give an example.” Yep. X gives an answer that shows he has only the vaguest idea of what a fabliau is, and an example that is flat-out wrong. (Though not quite as wrong as giving The Duchess of Malfi as an example of a mock-epic, which he also did on this same exam.) But, sheesh … he did a presentation on the topic! Even if he was reciting from a source word for word – which I’m now convinced was the case – how could he manage not to remember enough to give a halfway-decent answer to the question? I’m now thinking that C was a gift, and I’m frankly astounded that he had the nerve to whine about his grade when he didn’t know anything about the topic!
Grrr.
If we are thinking of the same pit thread then you are completely misrepresenting our argument.
I exaggerated for the sake of sarcasm and venting. But it still doesn’t mean that students are customers.
By the way, did you want me to add some flavored syrup to your latte?
Minor hijack: I don’t see anything wrong with asking for an extension, as long as you realize that you are not entitled to it. While I didn’t do so often in school, I felt no shame in telling a prof that my assignment would be much better if I could turn it in after the weekend instead of before, or if I could have a few more hours to work on it. Sometimes they gave me one, sometimes they didn’t, and sometimes there was a sliding scale of credit lost for late days that made it worthwhile to take an extra day and get a B for A-level work instead of the C for what I had done by the deadline.
In fact, I think extensions are a great way to encourage further learning for students, when given with discretion. Yes, I probably should have scheduled my time better to always have things done on time, but circumstances occasionally arose that kept me off my schedule. When that happened, I asked for an extension (unless the professor had already made it quite clear that extensions were either not given or given only for medical emergencies). When I didn’t get one, I turned in whatever I had, and tried to do better on later assignments. But when I did get an extension, I had an incentive to put more work into this assignment and to learn more from it.
To comment on the OP, I’m a recent graduate and I did not feel that there was an excessive amount of whining to professors about the workload. We bitched to each other, and occasionally argued that our answers on exams should have been marked correct, but the only time I can recall widespread whining to the professors was when several in the same major would assign large projects due the same day. Of course, I went to a competitive school with a heavy workload, and for the most part people knew what they were getting into when they got there.