AI cheaters, student financial struggles, one college closing every week: which higher Ed faculty are responsible for the slow, crumbling death of traditional higher Ed?
What a great piece! You've encapsulated 35 years of my repressed grumbling about what college actually was, versus the inescapable wide-eyed hype I endured beginning in middle school.
For stupid reasons, I went to a bottom-tier school. My primary reasons for attending were 1) they allowed early admission, thus enabling skipping senior year high school, and 2) a full scholarship. My time there featured all the professors in your lounge, although mine were lazy know-it-alls from other bottom-tier schools who taught like it was 1950. I only had one English prof that offered anything significant, and who herself had gone to a real school. Two of the male profs had married students, and oozed ick.
The late 80s/early 90s began the push for everybody to go to college, and the denigration of trades and other non-4-year-degree education. People we really need to keep things running were pushed to 4-year schools they didn't want to be in. (There was an active destruction of nursing schools beginning in the early 90s as well, to engineer the shortage we've had since.)
The preponderance of students at my bottom-teir school wanted the easiest tracks possible, and had no interest in anything intellectual, scientific or artistic. Maybe you're seeing the inevitable conclusion of that now, 40 years later. The grift could've kept on going if it hadn't gotten so expensive.
I knew before going it was a dumpy school, but reasoned that a year or two here with good grades (the scholarship required I maintain a 3.3 GPA or so) , I could transfer to somewhere better. I had no idea that transfer students were seen as second class citizens at best, and that no scholarships were available. I spent one semester at my chosen transfer school, which was what I thought a well-respected Boston creative arts and writing school. I did read a lot, and learned a lot from one prof, but otherwise it was people in the lounge. I asked the part-time instructor of the one writing class for advice on pursuing writing. "Keep writing," she said. Enough money for a really nice new car for that?
Sorry for the venting, but it's introduction for my echoing your conclusions. Higher ed has always been a big club that you're not in (RIP Uncle Carlin), but it's moreso all the time. Your open-mouth-chewer is common in their lazy thinking, because they've made it, so why make any effort? Tenure turned upside down from its intended purpose.
All this to say, I hear you, and I was there as a student. And don't forget this is all by design: the guy in Nixon's cabinet who realized an educated and awake youth imperiled their cushy excess. Making higher education a mandatory mortgage was the greatest evil idea the fascists ever had.
(Edited to be clear I don't begrudge community college or similar students at all. If anything, they're far more honest about who they are and what they want.)
Wow Dex - OMG what a nightmare for you! Yes, this is a perfect explanation for the professional mediocrity or worse of the majority of faculty at 4-year schools. I felt so badly for the young people who attended University of Redlands who were interns at Family Service when I was there in the 80s and 90s. These were great young people, all from local families - one was the daughter of a local doctor whom my uncle had gone to Med School with, and the family was exceptional - the dad & mom had adopted as many disabled children as possible from foster homes around the world (I mean REALLY disabled - and they used their own wealth & connections with nearby Loma Linda University Medical Center to get them the best treatment) and they had 4 children of their own, one of whom came to work at Family Service, and the other young man was the son of the local fire chief. Both of these students were great and they had this one class with a shithead for a teacher - he gave them "C's" for their internship because they didn't echo what were at the time, shitlib bullshit sociology nonsense and told the truth about the parents/families they'd gotten to know personally. I knew the Dean of Students, I knew the President of the school, and this man NEVER set foot at my organization nor spoke to a single person but had the gall to do this to two students who were infinitely more accomplished, intelligent, and insightful than he. Little did I know - he wasn't the exception, he was the rule. I was very fortunate to have 90% excellent instructors for my undergraduate career - only 10% were bad, but of course that 10% was extra-special steaming giant turd bad.
Also, the sort of community engagement you describe is exactly what college should be. Instead, schools are now just hedge funds teaching classes as a side hustle (not sure who originally made that joke, but it's true).
So many entitled second-raters just holing up, bemoaning AI because they've never made an effort themselves, so subconsciously projecting their envy that students have the ultimate cheat tool, and they didn't.
As we're seeing with administration at "top" "elite" American schools right now, the money train and cushy sinecures are far more important than student safety or freedom of expression. Deadbeat deans no different from executive VPs that do...what, exactly? I distinctly remember the crummy school's Dean of Students was simply someone who said 'no'. And the school couldn't figure out why nobody lived on campus or stuck around after classes ended.
Yep. What a job. I remember asking my friend who was a good Dean of Students didn't she find her job hard ... she was always cheerful so denied it, but she also seems extremely happy in her retirement.
What a great piece! You've encapsulated 35 years of my repressed grumbling about what college actually was, versus the inescapable wide-eyed hype I endured beginning in middle school.
For stupid reasons, I went to a bottom-tier school. My primary reasons for attending were 1) they allowed early admission, thus enabling skipping senior year high school, and 2) a full scholarship. My time there featured all the professors in your lounge, although mine were lazy know-it-alls from other bottom-tier schools who taught like it was 1950. I only had one English prof that offered anything significant, and who herself had gone to a real school. Two of the male profs had married students, and oozed ick.
The late 80s/early 90s began the push for everybody to go to college, and the denigration of trades and other non-4-year-degree education. People we really need to keep things running were pushed to 4-year schools they didn't want to be in. (There was an active destruction of nursing schools beginning in the early 90s as well, to engineer the shortage we've had since.)
The preponderance of students at my bottom-teir school wanted the easiest tracks possible, and had no interest in anything intellectual, scientific or artistic. Maybe you're seeing the inevitable conclusion of that now, 40 years later. The grift could've kept on going if it hadn't gotten so expensive.
I knew before going it was a dumpy school, but reasoned that a year or two here with good grades (the scholarship required I maintain a 3.3 GPA or so) , I could transfer to somewhere better. I had no idea that transfer students were seen as second class citizens at best, and that no scholarships were available. I spent one semester at my chosen transfer school, which was what I thought a well-respected Boston creative arts and writing school. I did read a lot, and learned a lot from one prof, but otherwise it was people in the lounge. I asked the part-time instructor of the one writing class for advice on pursuing writing. "Keep writing," she said. Enough money for a really nice new car for that?
Sorry for the venting, but it's introduction for my echoing your conclusions. Higher ed has always been a big club that you're not in (RIP Uncle Carlin), but it's moreso all the time. Your open-mouth-chewer is common in their lazy thinking, because they've made it, so why make any effort? Tenure turned upside down from its intended purpose.
All this to say, I hear you, and I was there as a student. And don't forget this is all by design: the guy in Nixon's cabinet who realized an educated and awake youth imperiled their cushy excess. Making higher education a mandatory mortgage was the greatest evil idea the fascists ever had.
(Edited to be clear I don't begrudge community college or similar students at all. If anything, they're far more honest about who they are and what they want.)
Wow Dex - OMG what a nightmare for you! Yes, this is a perfect explanation for the professional mediocrity or worse of the majority of faculty at 4-year schools. I felt so badly for the young people who attended University of Redlands who were interns at Family Service when I was there in the 80s and 90s. These were great young people, all from local families - one was the daughter of a local doctor whom my uncle had gone to Med School with, and the family was exceptional - the dad & mom had adopted as many disabled children as possible from foster homes around the world (I mean REALLY disabled - and they used their own wealth & connections with nearby Loma Linda University Medical Center to get them the best treatment) and they had 4 children of their own, one of whom came to work at Family Service, and the other young man was the son of the local fire chief. Both of these students were great and they had this one class with a shithead for a teacher - he gave them "C's" for their internship because they didn't echo what were at the time, shitlib bullshit sociology nonsense and told the truth about the parents/families they'd gotten to know personally. I knew the Dean of Students, I knew the President of the school, and this man NEVER set foot at my organization nor spoke to a single person but had the gall to do this to two students who were infinitely more accomplished, intelligent, and insightful than he. Little did I know - he wasn't the exception, he was the rule. I was very fortunate to have 90% excellent instructors for my undergraduate career - only 10% were bad, but of course that 10% was extra-special steaming giant turd bad.
Also, the sort of community engagement you describe is exactly what college should be. Instead, schools are now just hedge funds teaching classes as a side hustle (not sure who originally made that joke, but it's true).
So many entitled second-raters just holing up, bemoaning AI because they've never made an effort themselves, so subconsciously projecting their envy that students have the ultimate cheat tool, and they didn't.
As we're seeing with administration at "top" "elite" American schools right now, the money train and cushy sinecures are far more important than student safety or freedom of expression. Deadbeat deans no different from executive VPs that do...what, exactly? I distinctly remember the crummy school's Dean of Students was simply someone who said 'no'. And the school couldn't figure out why nobody lived on campus or stuck around after classes ended.
Yep. What a job. I remember asking my friend who was a good Dean of Students didn't she find her job hard ... she was always cheerful so denied it, but she also seems extremely happy in her retirement.