A heated farewell letter from an anonymous college professor leaving teaching, fed up with dumbass students and careerist hacks in the professoriat and university administration. Excerpt on the jump:
Will I miss some of my colleagues? Sure. They have a remarkable ability to enjoy their craft, but I have great difficulty believing that I am making a significant difference in the lives of my students. Are my peers aware students are skimming the reading? Yes. They have figured out that getting emotionally invested in the student body is both taxing and fruitless. Instead they enjoy their autonomy and the bucolic campus life without a second thought, or with a deeply imbued cognitive dissonance that I have not yet embraced.I will not miss all of them. Simply put, too many are intellectually lazy. Many of my colleagues think of the day they receive tenure as the last official day they have to produce research. They consider research as a burden, not as a labor of love that complements teaching.
As for the students, I know that I'll miss the good ones. Any good professor treasures the joy of seeing in a student's eyes the "ah-ha - now I get it" moment. It cannot be replicated, nor can it be easily described. It is sadly ever increasingly rare. In fact I think I am doing a genuine service to the better students by leaving. I cannot in good conscience dumb down a lecture, knowing full well that the gifted and talented have read four chapters beyond the syllabus, and that they are not being sufficiently challenged.
I am ready to move on - perhaps for a career where deadlines are honored, ideas are exchanged and gimmicks and fads are routinely avoided because they distract from advancing the mission of gaining and sharing knowledge. Yes, it is time to find another line of work, where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, even if I realize that the grass is grayer, if not greener, elsewhere.
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As a former journalist who is now a full-time college student (biology/pre-med), I see some truth in the professor's comments, but way too much overgeneralization. There are some students in my class (mostly the traditional ones who are right out of high school), who aren't interested in learning. But for every one of those students, there are two or three students who are giving it their all. Among my non-traditional peers, I would say that all of us are incredibly motivated.
It makes me a bit crazy to see the broad-brush painting of all college students as uninspired slackers. It simply isn't true. Now, there are classes that I'm required to take that I care about less than others, but they are the hurdles that I have to jump to get to med school, which I care about quite passionately. As a grown-up, you learn to do what is expected, even if the class isn't the most interesting or the most relevant to one's planned life work (sociology comes to mind). I'll take it, get my A and move on.
Now, if I could skip some of this nonsense and go directly to med school, I would, but that isn't how the system is structured. You've got to play within the system. Perhaps that's a skill learned from years of work, not straight out of high school.
We have a nice collection of anecdotal views here, including mine in previous posts. I'd like to offer a somewhat (and only somewhat) wider and objective view. Please note and remember: I have a trade school cert and a high school degree, nothing more. Caveat: my field is IT, and my remarks are for that field only.
The perennial question is an either-or question: a company wants someone who will fit in, or it wants someone who will do the work and meet a high standard of quality. I've worked for both types of companies in my 33 years of working.
A hiring manager in the former type will depend on first- and sometimes second-tier filtering based on superficial criteria. Clerks will wade through resumes or skill test results, and send along only those who are at or above a threshold the manager has set (sometimes, and I want to say often, arbitrarily). For this type, an applicant should not waste time applying without at least a bachelor's degree.
The latter type will advertise and actually mean "degree or equivalent experience". They will screen applicants on a detailed basis not practical from reading a resume. They will take the time to find qualified applicants, and send them along to the departments where the actual work is done, to be interviewed by three or four people over the course of an entire day.
I have worked for companies of the former type. They tend to have little difficulty keeping up with turnover, though their on-the-floor managers also tend to complain more about skills, quality and work ethic.
I currently work for a company of the latter type. It is heavily staffed with contractors, who also know they'll be the first to go if layoffs are needed. In the meantime, we permanent staff see periodic pleas from HR for referrals and recommendations for certain skill sets. It's not because those skills are not being taught (mainframe skills being an exception to that), but because degrees in them are a dime a dozen, and quality is only a small proportion of that volume. We see a vast majority of contractors from foreign lands. I have no firsthand view concerning that disproportion, except indirectly from knowing the quality standards of my company: If they (we) are hiring foreign nationals, it's because US citizens are not getting hired by the contracting firms, or because they are not passing the quality standards of my company.
I am glad he did not dumb down his lectures. I have designed a few college text books and found the writing to be painfully simplistic and written for the Jr. High School level. Recently, I saw a sign on my local college campus that said, "improve your reading and writing skills today..."! with a phone number and where to go for tutorial help. So, there is a problem with the lack of basic skills. I think some of this instructor's disinterested students may have learning disabilities that were never addressed properly in the K-12 system.
After 30+ years of college teaching in the sciences, I am also ready to move on. It's not just a matter of inadequate K-12 preparation, an increasingly non-existent work ethic, pitifully inept study habits, or a total lack of student motivation ... although I have seen a steady decline along each of those dimensions. On top of all that, I am now seeing instances of an anti-intellectual attitude that defy comprehension. I can only try to describe it with some anecdotes. Last term I asked my students for open-ended course feedback halfway through the semester: I was offering a new course for the first time, and I sincerely wanted to know how it was going.
Among many reasonable suggestions, I received a complaint about the fact that I expected students to purchase the required textbook. This student felt that it was my job to present all the required information during lectures, in which case no one should need to purchase the textbook. According to this individual, students are already paying enough in tuition (never mind it is almost always their parents footing the bill), so it should be enough to attend class without any additional investment in the educational process. This bizarre antipathy toward textbooks surfaced in one other comment from another student who complained about the fact that I was giving open-book quizzes and tests. This student claimed that all the open-book testing discriminated against students who chose not to the buy the required textbook. It was blatant discrimination!
I'm not making this up - and I'm also quite certain these comments were not intended to be a joke.
I’m not sure exactly when textbooks became a controversial teaching device. But on reflection, I realize that this is just a logical progression in widespread student attitudes toward textbooks. I've understood for many years now that most students do not bother with required reading assignments unless they are forced to do so via daily quizzes or other "motivational teaching practices" which I do use in classes aimed at freshmen. I believe students should feel insulted by this tactic after their freshman year (if not before).
For far too many students, getting through college seems to be all about negotiating the various hoops and hurdles with the least amount of effort. A precious handful are genuinely involved in learning - the difference is obvious. And perhaps the others could be inspired and transformed by a charismatic professor. But research institutions do not put a lot of stock in charisma during the tenure process, so my institution is probably not the best place for undergraduates who need massive doses of inspiration. To be honest, the best and brightest seem to come equipped with their own internal reasons for being there. So how much of my time and energy should be about compensating for all the shortcomings of the students who perceive nothing but annoying hoops and hurdles?
Am I just burned out? Probably. All those years on the front lines of higher education in a public university is bound to take a toll. But the curve of diminishing returns is not all about me. The rewards of teaching are still out there - they're just increasingly overpowered by all the various downward spirals.So I've had enough. Good luck to the next generation of professors out there. You'll need it.
Hi, anonymous prof. and all readers. I've been teaching at the college level for almost ten years now and I am starting to rue the day I ever chose to go into academia. I, too, have started getting queries at the beginning of the term about "Do I need to buy the textbook?" And, of course, the answer is, "Only if you want to pass."
I had a graduating senior complaining in my (world politics) class this week about those Tibetans murdering all the secular Chinese.
If what we are seeing is a nation-wide trend, and I believe it is, I am very worried about the country's future.
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