Oct. 31

I’m Leaving

I distinctly recall the first day of graduate school. Some of my classmates knew the field’s top-tier journals, the term “anonymous peer reviewing,” and each professor’s research area of expertise. I was a neophyte with raw, analytical skills, no publications, a healthy ego and a desire to teach at a small, liberal arts college, much like my alma mater. I soon learned my discipline – the jargon, the journals and the gossip.

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I honed my writing skills, and, more important, my thinking skills. Yet for all the merits of graduate school, even the premier one from which I was graduated, I left disappointed and ambivalent about the process. I took some classes with engaged, brilliant and dedicated professors, but I also attended more than a few seminars with detached scholars who thought of students as distractions from their labs and research. They were famous, but they could not teach, even their own research.

Like many other graduate students, I slogged through the bad, and made the most of the good. I got the job at the liberal arts college, where I received tenure, and even served as a department chair (a burden, not an honor, I tell you). I now want out.

Why? Because I fear that I have become the archetypical professor whom I did not want to become.

Don’t get me wrong. I still prepare my lectures and judging from the teacher evaluations, I know that I make students better thinkers. The classroom give-and-take produces a high that cannot be easily described or imitated. Even more, I love doing research. Sitting with pen and book in hand, or typing after months of textual analysis, is a rare joy. You mean I get paid to think? About ideas that inspire me? And I can read other research it, and dissect its merits? This gig is too good to be true.

Bingo.

After too many years at this job (I am in my mid-40s), I have grown to question higher education in ways that cannot be rectified by a new syllabus, or a sabbatical, or, heaven forbid, a conference roundtable. No, my troubles with this treasured profession are both broad and deep, and they begin with a fervent belief that most of today’s college students, especially those that come to college straight from high school, are unnecessarily coddled. Professors and administrators seek to “nurture” and “engage” and they are doing so at the expense of teaching. The result: a discernable and precipitous decline in the quality of college students. More of them come to campus with dreadful study habits. Too few of them read for pleasure. Too many drink and smoke excessively. They are terribly ill-prepared for four years of hard work, and most dangerously, they do not think that college should be arduous. Instead they perceive college as an overnight recreation center in which they exercise, eat, and in between playing extracurricular sports, they carry books around. If a professor is lucky, the books are being skimmed hours before class.

How do I know that my concerns are not unique to my employer, or my classroom? My students are brutally honest – they tell me with candor and without shame that their peers think of college as a four year cruise without a destination.

No doubt these students deserve some blame for their lethargy, but some culpability lies with their professors, and the administrators who ostensibly but unsuccessfully provide vision and direction. Today’s faculty and administrators capitulate to students’ demands in innumerable ways. They hold classes outside on sunny days, not really caring if there is no blackboard, or if the students are admiring each other instead of the texts to be dissected. They encourage students to think of college as a “comfortable” and “supportive” community, not as a means to acquire necessary skills. Far too many of my colleagues are dialing in – showing up late, popping in videos during class, assigning group projects, or sitting in a circle and asking students how they feel. Why they have abandoned classroom rigor is something that only they can answer. But one answer is simple – students flock to these popular classes, probably because they cater to the students’ worst sensibilities. Homework is minimal, or sometimes optional. Surprise quizzes are considered unfair. Late assignments are not failed. Some grades are even negotiable.

Such a pedagogy runs counter to the school, undergraduate and graduate training that I received, but it is openly embraced by nervous administrators who encourage faculty members to be innovative, experimental and experiential. They speak openly about pandering to student demands, but opt not to use the word “pander,” employing instead the curious and the trendy phrase “student empowerment.” I prefer to empower them with reading skills. But such a mission is considered old-fashioned. Maybe I should attend a seminar (don’t worry, the college will pay for it) titled “Technology in the classroom” or “Innovative pedagogies in the 21st century.” I pass.

Grade inflation is rampant. Students think of a “B minus” as an F. I constantly get criticized for grading too harshly, even though I find my mean grade point average has risen over the past decade. A “C” to today’s student is unfathomable. “Professor, I am on scholarship. How can you give me a C?” I remind them that I do not “give’” grades, but such semantics are lost on the student who yearns for an A at any cost. I tell them that I got Bs and Cs and I never complained, because I knew I deserved them. They do not believe me. (Maybe I should post my undergraduate and graduate transcripts on my office door?)

Grades did not matter to me because I believed in the superiority of my professor’s judgment. I recall questioning a professor’s grade – once and only once, only after I showed the assignment and his comments to a senior who lived down the hall. She advised me to speak to the professor. I did. The professor had made a simple calculating mistake, and apologized for his error. We remain friends to this day.

Today’s students are not questioning the logic behind the grades; They are questioning why their grades in my class are lower than in their other classes. Down the hall, those same students can get an A- by putting in three hours of work a week. How do I know? The students tell me, candidly, and without shame or the slightest pangs of guilt. To them, this disparity just doesn’t seem fair, and is the fault of the tougher grader.

Higher education for too many undergraduates at too many liberal arts colleges has become a puffy sofa nestled with down pillows. For a few bucks and in a few hours, students can take a test and learn that they are language disabled, or mathematically disabled, or for a few bucks more, both. Students increasingly ask me during advising sessions if a class is tough or hard, or if the professor assigns a lot of reading, because they need to “lighten their load.” “I want to take a class with Professor So-And-So. I have a lot on my mind, and I don’t want to stress out.” “Don’t worry,” I say, “you won’t.”

This comfy zone of mediocrity extends beyond the classroom. “Student life” largely serves to debilitate the notion of a genuine, deliberative, academic community. Rather than fuel cerebral discussions with activities for the mind, resident advisors and their adult supervisors plan activities that redefine anti-intellectualism. There is Sensitivity Day, Tolerance Day, and Wear [insert color here] Day, and a host of other events that are aimed at “inspiring.” Dorm life is supposed to be cool, fun and engaging. For me, it was simply a place to sleep.

My faculty colleagues rarely complain about their daily lives, or about the state of higher education. To the contrary, they feed the mindset that all students are exceptional by awarding high grades, honors and special prizes to the intellectually inferior. These faculty also yearn to be comfortable. How? By immersing themselves in trivial pursuits, like how many members should serve in the faculty senate, or whether serving on the Education Policy Committee should be determined by a simple majority, or a run-off election.

Intellectual sparring (dare I use the term) about ideas – among students and faculty – has been replaced by one-sided, partisan drivel (for example, Obama = admirable. McCain = terrible and, for the record, I will be voting for Obama). While it would be easy to blame a liberal bias among faculty for this groupthink, it should be noted that this simple world of good and bad pervades the world around us. On radio, television and the Internet, ideological pundits scream at one another with vitriol and fervor. My partisan colleagues are universally National Public Radio listeners. They do not hear the other side, so it is easy to demonize the other side. Their students are listening, and sadly think of conservatism in its many forms as horrific. Worse still, they now conflate liberal passion and advocacy with justice, and by default, analytic rigor and reason. They do not weigh evidence, or take note of pro, cons, costs or benefits. Doing so would be to admit that there are merits to positions they do not hold. To acknowledge that their ideology is imperfect is the first step towards compromise, or in their overused, precious phrase, “selling out.”

Their idealism, of course, is a work in progress. Nonprofit employment is admirable, but doing the same work for a for-profit corporation (with health care and retirement benefits) is deemed suspicious. Yet when college is completed, too many graduates have trouble finding work. The economy is rough, and even rougher for math-disabled, language-disabled, ideologically-driven, emotive students who do not read for pleasure. Should they take, say, an accounting course, or Shakespeare, either of which would test or push their comfort zones? Their hearts say yes, but the problem is that these classes meet early in the morning (Shakespeare at 8:30 am? C’mon!), when hangovers are to be nursed and sleepy minds are not to be awakened. Besides, rumor is that the Shakespeare professor is a tough grader.

Working at a small college is no easy task. We professors oftentimes work without research assistants. We have heavy teaching loads, and we grade our own assignments. Endowments are low, and so too are salaries and research funding. But hard work need not be depressing, and rather than become depressed, I have learned after almost 20 years that I am woefully ill-suited for today’s classroom.

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.

John Smith is the pseudonym of a professor at a liberal arts college. He asked to remain anonymous because he is continuing to teach while he is job-hunting and doesn’t want his comments to reflect on his institution.

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Comments

Poor baby

I’m also in my mid-40s. I too have taught at liberal arts colleges. I have a PhD from a top university. I have publications. I have a teaching award.

I am unemployed. I have no health insurance. I am cold right now as I type because the heat in my building is poor. But I probably won’t be here much longer because my savings are all gone. I have applied for more than 70 jobs this year and gotten nothing.

Parasites like “John Smith,” who are too spineless and self-serving to make themselves useful in one of the most highly-privileged positions in society are repellent.

Sick of Parasites, at 5:00 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Not everywhere

I think you may be in the wrong school, not the wrong line of work. Although I agree with Sick of Parasites about some issues, I am an administrator at an evangelical Christian university, and I don’t think most of our students behave as you describe. I know with post-tenure review, most of the faculty don’t behave as you describe, either.

Every job has its heartaches and headaches; but university teaching (or administering, frankly) has so many possibilities for joy that you should keep looking.

And to Sick of Parasites: I’m sorry for your situation. I got into teaching in 1977, when I was one of dozens finishing doctorates from my Big Ten school. Only two of us had more than one interview, but because I was an evangelical, I was willing to look outside the R1 universities or the selective liberal arts colleges. It’s a different world, but not a bad one. I say this because the graduate school world is not very honest about the desirability of working outside the R1 or the national liberal arts college scene. The evangelical Christian liberal arts college, paying far less than either of these other groups, may be one of the few places left where you are rewarded for teaching, praised for scholarship, and enjoy a community that is supportive and caring.

RJS, at 5:55 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Because I Cannot Not Teach

John, I’ve met you—in the mirror. Fifteen years ago I did what you’re about to do, left teaching (and became the CEO of a foundation), and soon found the “dream job” away from these student issues. However, I discovered within two years it was someone else’s dream and returned to the academy. A few weeks ago McGraw-Hill released my account of this journey in Why I Teach: And Why It Matters to My Students (56 pp.), and I’m sending a copy to Doug and Scott to pass along. In many ways it took me a career to write this little book, and I fully understand your points of frustration, and perhaps stepping away (at least for now) is the answer. I hope not, as we cannot change an institution from the outside, and it appears that you’re a unique professor making a significant difference in the lives of students. Parker Palmer, Phil Garner (MSU), Barbara Tobolowsky (USC), Laurie Schreiner (APU & Gallup), Ed St. John (UM) and various others helped me with this piece and perhaps you’ll find their powerful comments of help. They answered the basic question found in the title. After returning to the academy I’ve devoted the past 12 years trying to figure out how to make the best of the situation (that you describe) and with the help of many dozens just finished a second book (releasing 1/09, MH) that tries to address head on the very student issues you mention, and for me the fulcrum of their issues is one of purpose. As an ancient historian this was all new material for me. (I’m glad that Tracy Skipper produced the primer for faculty members thrust into student issues [USC—National Resource Center]). I have also found Mark Schwehn’s book, Exiles from Eden, especially helpful (Oxford). Also, see the new JB book in the New Agenda series on “Shaping a Life of the Mind in Practice” by Sullivan and Rosen. Braskamp shared with me several of its helpful insights—and it seems to have motivated him anew, even in quasi-retirement. I’ve also found a great cadre of colleagues nationally through NACADA, FYE, CIC, Magna, Pathways, etc. that are giving first-rate energies to first-rate priorities (people on tenure-tracks or long-since tenured) and have waded and/or continue to wade these very waters. Several of us are giving a talk for the Teaching Professor (11/20) that addresses a couple of the heavy questions you’re asking. Also, what John Gardner’s group is working on (Foundations of Excellence) is a major attempt to help colleges address more robustly these issues. Thanks for provoking us to think anew about what oftentimes is a rather dire situation, and to answer a new questions about systemic problems. I hope this is of some benefit, and perhaps the last thing you want is a list of things to read, though in all sincerity, I hope they’re of some value.

Jerry Pattengale, Assistant Provost at Indiana Wesleyan University, at 7:05 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Contract not renewed

Hear, Hear!!!I just found out yesterday that my contract at a community college will not be renewed. I was told: “It’s not a good fit.” I agree. I expect students to be able to read, write, and do basic math. I’m told my expectations are too high. I expect students to read the assigned material and come prepared to discuss and THINK in class. I’m told that I’m not teaching in the right manner. I expect to be respected in the classroom. I’m told I’m arrogant. The average GPA in this institution is in the A range, even though most of the students cannot find their noses in the dark unless you give them detailed directions, show them how to do it a few times, and finally do it for them. Good luck. I tried to maintain a shred of academic integrity and I paid the price for it.

Vanessa, at 7:20 am EDT on October 31, 2008

It sounds like John Smith teaches at a privileged institution with full-time students (the reference to the college experience as a cruise, and to students spending their time working out at the gym, etc.)

Professors who work at more diverse and/or less traditional institutions may find different rewards to teaching than those sought by Smith, rewards that can be sustaining.

Chris, at 8:05 am EDT on October 31, 2008

You Kids Get Off My Lawn!

It’s called a mid-life crisis and you’ll get over it. I fear, however, that you’ll never shake off the contempt you have for your students, colleagues, and institution. So perhaps you’re making the right decision after all.

For what it’s worth, there remains little new under the sun. The charges you level against your students are the same ones that have been directed by certain professors at every previous generation since at least the 1960s and probably since the days of Plato. In part, it’s just a case of generational resentment, the middle aged coming to grips with their lost youth. But I also suspect that, because so many professors spent their undergraduate years as bookworms and nerds, they fail to recognize just how many of their own classmates were slackers back in the day. Plus ca change, and all that.

As for the author’s hackneyed observations about academic politics, I’ll leave that discussion to the full-time professor-haters who inexplicably haunt the IHE comments section. If Professor “Smith” thinks he’ll find more intellectual diversity and superior intellectual sparring at an accounting agency or a consulting firm or a Wal-Mart, well, follow your bliss, baby.

In the meantime, if IHE feels the compulsion to share with us the internal struggles of forty-something academics, I hope that next time they will try to find one with something original to say.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:20 am EDT on October 31, 2008

In for a shock

“John Smith” is in for a shock when he hits the real-world work force, and the shock is going to be steep if he brings “liberal arts” instead of technical/IT skills with him. The challenge he describes is one to face, not run from.

David Anderson, at 8:25 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Kudos for speaking out and to Inside Higher Ed!

Finally someone’s willing to admit the intellectual inbreeding that takes place on so many campuses across the country.

Thanks for speaking up and to Inside Higher Ed for publishing this testimonial to the ideological onesidedness too prevalent among faculty these days.

Shawn, at 9:21 am EDT on October 31, 2008

not a new complaint

These complaints are not new. My father went to college in the late 1930’s, and once told me the joke that “college is a four year loaf on the old man’s bread".

baby boomer, state university, at 9:21 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Truth spoken to power

I’m a faculty kid. I did real work (I.T. systems development) for a while, then returned to academia to a tenure-track position.

I left again. Why?

Well .. here’s some visuals, for the unapologetically biased —

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBEgjqylroE

http://tinyurl.com/5w2rqy

And .. the president who built instead of thought. Provost managing by memo. Vice-provost ($175,000 budget) who struggled to find something to do. Non-stop gender wars.

Office neighbor, still running around with Billy Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn as a Weatherman. The many tenured who retired in place years ago and stopped caring about the job in GHWB’s last year as President. I.T. department that could not keep system operating to basic requirements; using groups.google or groups.yahoo would have been easier.

There were good days, and many of the students were good performers. A few great students and a few students saved from their personal demons.

.. and absent the two or three students who would have PUBLIC temper-tantrums about “how hard this stuff is.” The grade-gunners who, having been given a 99/100, argued for two hours for 100/100. The frat boys who slept in class, rather than thought.

The only way this is going to improve is for the near-collapse of the USA, only a behaviorial shock will take hold.

Talking and talking “plans” doesn’t work — getting the deadwood out and demanding results does.

Don’t agree? Well, lots of people have started up independent institutions of education. Show the world how great you are and do the same. No one is stopping you. Or is it really just about a paycheck and a TIAA-CREF account?

Unapologetically for Performance, Ex-TT at Podunk State U., at 9:21 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Psychology

While I agree with the new generation of students not caring about the quality of their education, professors being more interested in their publishing, ego-maintenance and anal-retentive attitudes, there is a flaw in Joe Professor’s logic. As educators we go willingly into academia knowing that we can’t reach every student and make a difference in their lives, but we can adhere to our own code of ethics — we can give the students the best education within our power. That is OUR mission as educators. So corruption among professors is rampant, but we don’t have to play that way -we have choices. Bailing out because of students’ academic habits. Take responsibility for your teaching experience and make students accountable for their learning. If all professos with a conscience gave up and left the filed, we would have nasty crisis as serious as our economy.

Ivan Mancinelli-Franconi, Ph.D, Professor, at 9:21 am EDT on October 31, 2008

I had it too

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to teach. I was raised with a strong foundation where education is taken seriously and teachers are to be your idle and to be respected even when they were wrong. Entering the classroom today, especially middle and high school, you are under the mercy of the students just to save your job. Not even the administration cares about the teachers, they want to save their ass, so when a teacher complains about a student behavior nothing is done about it and the parents are worse than students because instead of straightening out their children, they are threatening the administration to put pressure on the teacher or fire him or her. And they wonder why we’re far behind in education? it is because our kids are too busy watching who said what to whom instead of the main reason why they are in school and that is getting an education, so when they graduate high school, professors like you get them with absolutely not much foundation and the inability to do well and compete nationally, let alone with the global economy. We’re going down and fast. I don’t see it changing, do you?

mona rowan, teacher, at 10:15 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Dont’ Want to Burst Your Bubble, But...

I spent 33 years in private sector corporations before joining an academic community, and there was less of the Shangri-La ("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")you are seeking out there than I have found in one year in the academy.

Ken, at 10:55 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Corrupt Opinion

I am deeply disturbed by the professors comments here. First of all, I believe that the professor needed to retire because he is so set in his own ways that he cannot see the diversity of ways in which students learn these days. Many of the points he made about students being coddled and lazy and not intellectually stimulated are some of the exact ways in which it has been proven that students engage better in learning, learn more, and end up being retained until graduation (campus life, service learning, inquiry based learning — to name a few). It is true that students today learn very differently than thirty years ago, but they are not fully to blame. Students today have received different messages from the moment they were born about how to learn than even those who went to college in the 90s. These students have had the internet their entire lives where information is easier and quicker to receive and there are many other ways of absorbing knowledge.

Although I have been out of college several years, I know from my own personal experience that I did work diligently to learn material, pass tests, etcetera, as did my friends. As a student affairs professional, I have had the pleasure to work with students for the past seven years and see how excited they are when they are taking a class they love with a professor who engages them. I also see the ways in which students learn outside of the classroom when I have a student employee for two, three, or four years who could not even call a vendor in their first year and by their fourth year they are planning campus-wide events that involved collaboration, relationship building, logistic planning, calculating, analyzing, etc. I think it is extremely shortsighted to make a blanket statement that students don’t learn and don’t care about learning just because they don’t read books for fun. I think there are many students out there who want to learn and know it is important, but they also need to know how any of the learning they do will be maintained and useful in the future. So many times during my college career, I went to classes where reading had been assigned and the professor never connected the reading to any lecture, discussion, or test. What is the natural response after that? Yes, that’s right, not to read or to just skim. There is also fault in how the professors presented information. It has been proven over and over that lecture is not the most effective way to maintain knowledge and yet many professors still lecture straight through their courses. While I don’t disregard the fact that lecture needs to happen, much research has been devoted to inquiry based learning and interactive learning and team learning and how all of these methods help a student learn better and also enjoy it more. I am sure if you surveyed students, the vast majority would still say that their professors have not adapted courses for this style of learning and that most classes are still lecture based.

While I don’t want to argue that students do not have their own part in learning and that some students are, in fact, ridiculously lazy when it comes to taking responsibility for their own learning and grades, I think this professor is so “old school” that he can’t even cope with the fact that his way might not be the only way and so he is quitting. Wouldn’t it be great if both students and faculty could come together and discuss how each group’s challenges could be lessened via cooperation and listening to one another? If the majority of faculty actually got involved with their students outside of the classroom, they would know that students are excited to learn (just in different ways), learn better when they are engaged with faculty outside of the classroom, and the students graduate at higher rates when they have personal relationships with faculty, staff, and other students. College students today are not pariahs of the new century, they are just different than the baby boom generation and I believe it is our job to at least attempt to adapt to their needs in order to serve them better.

marci, at 11:10 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Mid-life crisis

Perhaps I’m also experiencing a mid-life crisis, but I found many of my recent thoughts reflected in his comments. And perhaps I simply suffer from a lack of integrity, but when so much of how you are doing as a teacher is tied to student evaluations it’s difficult not to make things easier on students who seem to get more and more petulant when faced with a B or a C. Of course, being an academic is a job with perqs not found elsewhere. I think some of us simply wish that a culture of privilege was not so pervasive.

John, at 11:20 am EDT on October 31, 2008

Well ... Isn’t This Something

Just to couch my post in the proper language and take issue with some of the earlier posters, I believe ...

1. Professor Smith’s essay is not a complaint about his students ... it is about the culture for learning in which he has found himself. “Culture for learning” is a kind of nebulous term that, unfortunately, is rarely examined or discussed at colleges and universities these days. For the most part, they stink ... and that is true across a very broad range of colleges and universities. It is laughable, isn’t it, that we never use “community of scholars” any more to describe higher education in these United States ... and for good reason.

2. While it is true that the current state of affairs, generally speaking, cannot be changed from the outside, it is not clear it can be changed at all ... outside or inside. So why hang on ... and on ... and on ... Pollyannishly hoping you can make a difference when it is flat-out hopeless. Of course, one can always imagine oneself as an intellectual guerrilla warrior, ignoring everything except hir students. And why won’t that work ... you got it, culture for learning. It frustrates everything ... even for teachers who, like Professor Smith, have positive relationships with their students.

Two days ago in IHE I wrote “I did my best to motivate my students to be life-long learners, but I rarely employed brutally honest strategies for the purpose of inspiring those who, apparently ignorant of the consequences [marci excepted], seemed to bask in the putrid warmth of academic and intellectual mediocrity ... the consequences of which are, unfortunately, ubiquitously apparent in the current election.”

3. Teaching – and forget about the “research” – is not a job. It is much, much more than that (sorry Sick of Parasites and Unapologetically Tenured). [An aside: This must be a very strange essay inasmuch this is the first time in a coon’s age – not that raccoons live that long – that I have found myself in disagreement with UT ... and I mean from his first sentence to his last. The fact is we fill journals like IHE with an interminable amount of pap that resides on the margins of the intellectual/educational process, only rarely discussing the critical issues that have inspired Professor Smith to bail out.]

4. This essay is not even close to an admission of contempt for students. My two best friends are mathematicians with a combined 85 years of teaching experience – no mid-life crises there – and either could have written this essay. Both loved mathematics and teaching and cared about their students as much as anyone could possible imagine. “Getting out” was both exhilarating and depressing for them. They were relieved to separate themselves from highly dysfunctional cultures for learning – and they both taught at highly regarded liberal arts colleges – but they were depressed to finally come to the realization that they could not inspire and sustain communities of scholars in which faculty and students worked together as committed – okay, at least enthusiastic – colleagues. They succumbed to the realization that that life’s goal was nothing but a pipe dream. And, by the way, their decisions were not a function of having contempt for their students ... they were a function of the fact that the longer they taught, the more systemic barriers stood in the way of their serving their students well.

5. I definitely disagree with David Anderson – not to mention his reference to a non-academic position as “the real-world work force” – that academics find themselves out of their element when they take jobs outside academe. After teaching for 28 years, I took a 12 year hiatus during which I worked as a consultant for manufacturing, assembly, and financial services organizations. The transition was not that difficult, and I had a blast. After 12 years, however, I was eager to get back to academe ... which I found to be somewhat less interesting than when I left it. Had I changed or had it? Probably both, but I do believe that if you conducted an analysis of cultures of learning (and that would be a career for someone), you would discover that, however you operationalized it, all of the slopes would be negative.

P.S. Perhaps there is no problem here – perhaps Professor Smith is just a recalcitrant misfit — but if there is a problem — i.e., if dysfunctional cultures for learning are ubiquitous — then there must be root causes. Personally I believe there are. The evolution of colleges and universities from “communities of scholars” to occupational training institutions? The remarkable evolution of academic institutions from places where faculty and students “dominated” — i.e., were thought to be the whole point of the institution – to places where administrators and staff outnumber the faculty? The fact that the notion of a COMMUNITY of scholars has become laughable and has been replaced – apparently for cost reduction purposes (we have to be able to pay the ubiquitous administrators and staff) – by “part-timers,” and with no intention, thought or strategy for including them into anything remotely approximating a community of faculty and students? The evolution of colleges and universities from organizations directed and managed by faculty into organizations “managed” by quasi-businesspersons employing failed “business” models for which there is no intellectual or practical foundation?

NO!!! Those are not the root causes. They are merely symptoms of the causes of the pathetic assortments of cultures of learning we have across our fair land. In my opinion, the root cause lies in the faculties of those colleges and universities who, somewhere back in the fifties, consciously or unconsciously decided that “what was” was simply not sufficiently valuable to warrant their diligent commitment to nurturing and improving. They were much too important to dirty their hands in that stuff ... and anyway, the path to academic success was not “to be a scholar” – remember when that word really meant something? — but “to play the academic game” and establish self-serving relationships with administrators who were running the show anyway. But that’s another story.

Frizbane Manley, at 11:40 am EDT on October 31, 2008

AMEN

I couldn’t agree with you more. For those of us who are pre-tenure the situation is extremely disheartening, as there is nothing to do except make little compromises that in the end add up to selling out. Gerald Graff’s column in the MLA Newsletter speaks to the same issue and is very insightful. It might give those few of us willing to see the reality and severity of the situation described in this article some consolation to know that never have professors not had to deal with the common misconceptions of students about the purpose of college and how best to spend their time there. Student Life, at my institution, does not adequately reinforce the mission of the college and at times even communicates a contrary message. This is a problem, I believe, that goes beyond the historical situation that Graff discusses. Many of the comments about this article are dismissive. I happen to agree with the author because I have to deal with the same things everyday, and in fact the chair of my department sent this to every member and asked us to read it to discuss at our next meeting. It saddens me to think that I might have colleagues who would willfully ignore the reality of this situation and say that everything is fine. My older sister opted to go the corporate route instead of academia and is an assistant VP at a major bank. She complains constantly about the poor quality of work she consistently sees in new college grads who she hires, some of whom come to her from prestigious schools. She complains about a lack of initiative, lack of discipline, lack of creativity, lack of engagement and lack of effort. She also points out that these same people have a very high opinion of themselves. In closing, whether or not the author’s comments reflect the culture of all of our institutions, I think it is important to remember that we have an obligation to our students to prepare them for what waits for them after college. If we’re not asking ourselves everyday what we are doing to fulfill that obligation, it might be that we are contributing, in a small or big way, to the problem that this author describes. There are vast implications for not holding our students to the very highest standards, and the battle is only that much harder when there are colleagues who willfully refuse to see the reality that is so apparent to the rest of us.

Anonymous, Assistant Professor at Liberal Arts College, at 11:50 am EDT on October 31, 2008

My Apologies ...

Sorry to get back in so quickly, but Anonymous’ point is waaay too important to ignore.

First, I completely agree with his perspective.

Second, the importance of his comment about young people getting their Ph.D.’s (or other terminal degrees), getting their first tenure track positions (if they should be so lucky), and then diligently spending the next “seven” years playing “an academic game” that, in all probability, has very little to do with their long-term scholarly objectives or instructional ideals cannot be overemphasized.

Meaning no disrespect to Anonymous and with apologies to George Orwell ...

“If being a scholar means anything at all, it means the right to define yourself as an intellectual and follow your unique path to furthering knowledge and informing and inspiring students. Don’t imagine that for years on end you can make yourself a boot-licking player of the academic game, or any other game, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore.”

No wonder ... no wonder ...

Frizbane Manley, at 1:10 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

Good Riddance

It must be tough to be the best teacher in your own mind and then to witness evidence of sloth all around you, like the use of 20st century technology (“popping in a video”), collaborative learning (“assigning group projects”), and student participation (“sitting in a circle and asking students how they feel”). There’s no need to learn from your colleagues by attending teaching seminars if you already know it all. The old methods worked for you, so why shouldn’t they work for everyone else 30 years later? If you think your colleagues are “intellectually lazy,” there’s no need to explore why they “rarely complain about their daily lives” (my guess is that you do enough complaining for them). Don’t engage your colleagues; just dismiss them for being intellectually lazy. After all, you know best.

Look, if the image of students having class on a sunny day under a tree fills you with rage (Where’s the blackboard! My god! They’re looking at one another!), you don’t have the right temperament for the job. I’ve never held class outside for similar reasons, but I recognize that other professors have good reasons for the choices they make, and I’m not so arrogant to assume that I have all the answers.

I wish the author well in finding that mythical job he’s never going to find. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Brian, Associate Prof at Large Midwest U, at 1:10 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

When an instructor feels contempt for students, *the students know it*.

Imagine a dynamic of mutual dislike in any work environment. Of course the people involved are going to end up unhappy.

Has the author tried to embrace youth culture? Try simply attempting to like students, getting to know them, and seeing the world from their perspective. It may then be difficult to continue feeling such strong disdain toward them.

NJK, at 1:35 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

Every Single Sentence???

When Frizbane Manley says he disagrees with my every sentence, from beginning to end, it may be time for me take another look at what I wrote. (Frizbane’s comprehensive rejection of my post also reminds me of Mary McCarthy’s famous putdown of Lillian Hellman: “Everything she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’". I love that line.) I’ll admit that very few of my best posts are written prior to the second cup of coffee. So let me, as we say in the biz, revise and resubmit.

First, Frizbane is absolutely correct that, even with its weaknesses, this sort of article comes a lot closer to the issues we academics care about—or ought to care about—than the all-too-frequent reports of the latest goings-on in the irrelevant worlds of Bill Ayres, Ward Churchill, and the Duke 88. So perhaps I was overly dismissive to begin with.

Second, he’s probably right that “contempt” was the wrong word to use. It is obvious that Professor “Smith” does care about his students, though I continue to think he sells them short. And complaints such as these, lamenting the habits and practices of the younger generation, really are as old as the chalkboard.

I guess two things set me off. I am not a fan of the concept of grade inflation, since it is based on amorphous standards and begs a number of assumptions. Maybe earlier professors gave deflated grades (whatever that means). Maybe kids are better prepared now than they were thirty years ago. Maybe we’re better teachers. I don’t know that any of these things is true, but I also don’t know that higher GPAs represent a problem rather than an accomplishment. And as for Professor “Smith", he should just give the grades he thinks are appropriate; unless his standards are way out of whack with those of his colleagues, students will generally respect him for it. Sure, course evaluations correlate with grades, but I’m guessing that the correlation is much lower than most people imagine.

The other thing that set me off, of course, was the gratuitous bit about liberal college professors and their pernicious influence over impressionable young minds. Does Professor “Smith” really think he and his colleagues have that much of an influence over their students’ partisanship and ideology. If so, he doesn’t know his students nearly as well as he thinks he does.

So, on balance, I was a bit unfair here. Professor “Smith” deserves better than I gave him. But I still find the article flawed and more than a little self-absorbed.

Anyway, thanks to Frizbane for the incentive to back off from some of my more incendiary remarks.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 2:00 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

Back in the day

Thirty some years ago I started college. Partied a lot, looked for easy classes, etc.

I don’t believe students have changed that much. There have always been a lot of slackers looking for an easy A and whining if they don’t get it. It may well be that the author is burned out. Burnouts were around in the 70’s too.

I teach for the hardworking students and for the brightest students. Oh, I support all the students as best as I can but the reason I teach is the students who really want to learn.

Best of luck to the author.

Faculty Person, at 2:40 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

faulty argument

Just curious: since when does historicizing an argument invalidate it? How does the fact that many profs over the years have been complaining about the quality of their students nullify similar claims made today?

Steve, at 2:50 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

Another Perspective

I’ve taught at both exclusive liberal arts colleges and at a community college. The attitude of the studetns is striking. At the liberal arts colleges I’ve been told by students that they were paying too much to get a B. At the community college I sometimes have wounded Iraq war veterans who appreciate all the effort that I give them.

Currently, I have a community college student who was hit by a car while riding a scooter back from the grocery store. He was thrown into a ditch, but the car did not stop. He has no insurance, so he’s going to tough it out, although he thinks he might have a cracked rib. Hit hurts every time that he breathes deeply. But he is still coming to class and doing his best. He’ll probably earn a B. A student like that makes it all worthwhile to me, and I have many similar students.

As for the ones that don’t try or come to class, I fail them. I’m currently teaching at a growing community college. There are always more students who want a shot at an education if the current ones drop out.

I would suggest that “Professor Smith” give teaching at a community college a shot. The students will appreciate that a serious scholar thinks that they are worthy of his efforts, and he won’t have to put up with spoiled rich kids. However, I get the impression that “Professor Smith” would think that such teaching is beneath him. Maybe he’ll prove me wrong.

Eric Brandon, at 4:05 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

DON’T LEAVE

I agree with a lot of the complaints of John Smith in “I’m Leaving” (Inside Higher Ed, Oct. 31, 2008). However, his solution, to leave academia, seems dubious. Of course, it may be right for him, but it would certainly be wrong for me and for most professors, I think. WHY BEING A PROFESSOR IS GOODSome recent rating of jobs rated being a professor the second best of all jobs, with IT engineer being number 1. It said professors have a lot of freedom to work as they wish and a lot of free time. These things are unheard of in most jobs. Most jobs do not want creativity from their employees, but want them to follow the company way. This is also true to an extent in academia, but not nearly as much in most jobs. Also, most jobs do not allow you to pursue things as you wish, e. g. your research. In most jobs there is no such thing as you choosing how to define your job, or your choosing your way is very limited. You do what the company wants, or else.

THOSE WHO LEFTWhen I was on sabbatical at University of California at Santa Cruz in 1972-73, I met two professors who concluded that the university was too much an indoctrinator of people and not radical enough, and were going to leave academia. Those were some ideals of that time, quite different from the complaints of John Smith. One professor, a man, was going to be a carpenter, but I do not know what the other one, a woman with a doctorate from Stanford, was going to do. Unfortunately, I do not know the outcome for them—if they were happier working outside academia.

However, I do know of a psychology graduate student who left over similar concerns. She ended up being homeless for awhile, living in her car. She tried to get some kind of clinical job (with only a B.A. degree) but was unable to for over a year. She may have eventually obtained a job. How her job, perhaps in perhaps a counseling center, psychology clinic, or state hospital, was better than being a graduate student and being prepared for a future good job, I do not know. Possibly, for her it was. But, rationally, it seems to me that she would have been better to stick it out in graduate school.

IN CONCLUSION"John Smith” makes a lot of good critiques of what is wrong today with students and with academia. But, I question the wisdom of handling this by leaving. Is it going to be better working for General Motors or as a reader of books for some publishing house, or working in computer repair? Or, in a factory?

So, “John Smith” I have two words for you. Don’t leave!

Russell Eisenman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Texas-Pan American, at 4:10 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

There is a Light

Dear Dr. Smith:

I hear your angst and understand it. I think you have hit the bullet on the head in many ways. However, I would disagree on one point and at the same time suggest there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. The point of disagreement is that the old paradigm of teaching as telling works; to put it simply, except for a few, highly internally motivated students, lecturing and professor dominated assignments and learning activities does not really work. The culture has changed — more students than ever are attending college from all types of backgrounds. In past decades, those who attended college were often those who were most interested in learning and in an intellectual life of the mind. That is no longer necessarily the case. I do not believe that just going back to intense lectures, demanding more of students, and being “tough” will work. The scientific literature on learning is clear about this — most students in these settings grow to dislike learning even more than they did coming in, and they do not learn and retain the material long enough to move upwards in cognitive complexity to use it. On the other hand, I agree that students often come in expecting to be coddled and to view college as a mere hurdle to be endured, at best. However, there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. It is called Learner Centered Teaching — hang on! This is NOT coddling students; it is a paradigm shift in teaching. Higher Education stands on the cusp of a transformation that would be extremely powerful and useful, but it is a transformation that is neither easy nor painless. LCT involves sharing power with students, designing courses in ways that create increased personal responsibility by students for learning, that integrate assessment with learning activity, and that engage students in ways that promote higher learning and deeper approaches to learning. This way of teaching demands more of the instructor, especially in terms of course design time and formative evaluation of student work — but is reenergizes faculty who learn to implement it, and directly benefits student learning. It does not inflate grades, and it does not view students as consumers or customers to be satisfied. I encourage you to learn more about it — there still may be time to save your career. Unfortunately, it is true that to significantly achieve this paradigm and cultural shift will require the combined and collaborative effort of many faculty and administrators who work together to revise curricula, to train each other in this new way of thinking and doing teaching, and to support their efforts to implement and apply LCT principles. There may be institutions of higher education where it will never take hold; however, I am fortunately to be in an institution where this process is beginning and is supported. It is an exciting time to be in academia.

Anton Tolman, at 7:20 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

College life

I retired early five years ago from a Liberal Arts College; some of this rings true, and I do not think it deserves the scurrilous and insulting remarks such as comment # 1 embodies. “Smith” seems a reasonable sort, deeply concerned, honest, and not in any sort of mid-life crisis.

My son went to a fine Liberal Arts College in the 90’s. It worked wonders; he was challenged and it made all the difference. Ten years later, his younger sister went to the same school. Some of its strengths were still there, but she was finally glad to finish after 3.5 years. (The core humanities program had vanished, sadly.) She found the teachers excessively indulgent and students voiced shoddy thinking encouraged, particularly in classroom exchanges —- as if there was some concern that students would be made “uncomfortable.” The line between coddling and real encouragement (which involves some discomfort, perhaps, and certainly challenges) may be tough to delineate, but I suspect that Liberal Arts Schools’ concern about attrition may have created the kind of atmosphere Smith describes so well.

Doubtless there will be lots of commentary to the effect that Smith is pointing out nothing new: college has always been that way.

I don’t think so. Read Horowitz’s CAMPUS LIFE, a fine history of American College culture.

George K, at 8:15 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

I am, as you wrote, one of those over-prepared persons who reads four chapters ahead of everything and manages to get some of her own (fun) reading in as well. Heck, sometimes even the class reading I do is fun, or at least interesting. As you also noted, it is exceedingly frustrating when the *other* students have not read ahead or have not read at all, and becomes even more so when the teacher accepts that his/her students are not doing the work and continues “teaching” anyway!

The “aha!” moment you wrote of is, I imagine, just as wonderful for students as it is for teachers. For me, such enlightening moments are getting rarer and rarer with each passing year of school. Every teacher I’ve had this year seems to be interested in only advancing their own agenda, and heaven forbid anyone else should have a conflicting opinion. . .

If you are as good a teacher as I think you are, I and the real, dedicated, hardworking academic world will miss you greatly.

Jenni Lunde, I’m sorry. at Cardinal Stritch University, at 9:10 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

Life is too short...

to work a job you hate.

Attrition of faculty members — especially the good ones — is a real problem at many institutions. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about your decision.

T-bone, at 9:10 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

Anonymous Rants

John Smith ... asked to remain anonymous because he is continuing to teach while he is job-hunting and doesn’t want his comments to reflect on his institution.

Why not? Because he might not find a better job and need the fallback? Because he doesn’t want his colleagues to think him uncollegial until he leaves? Because he thinks an open discussion might produce dissenting perspectives?

I’m not opposed to anonymity, by any means. But the juxtaposition of this pointed essay with this odd protective reflex is too much.

Jonathan Dresner, at 9:50 pm EDT on October 31, 2008

nice problem to have

It must be nice to have John Smith’s problem. What I wouldn’t give to be in the position from which he is escaping. I’m in the same boat as Sick of Parasites. I haven’t advanced to square one professionally, even as I have now entered my fifth decade of life. I have a Ph.D., a list of publications, and extensive teaching experience. I’m trying to enter a profession that is replacing professors with contingent faculty members whose wages are hardly enough for a one-bedroom apartment in a low rent neighborhood.

adjunct professor, at 6:20 am EDT on November 1, 2008

@ Anton

I completely agree with you about the virtues of learner centered teaching. As I learn more about the science of learning, I have come to realize that the way I taught things 10 years ago might not have been the best approach. John Smith shows no interest in learning anything new. He scoffs at your pedagogical ideas, dismisses the science behind it, and looks down on his colleagues that use words like “learner.” In his mind, he’s not the problem; everyone else is.

That’s why I’m a little surprised at the sympathetic treatment he’s getting here. If he were a medical doctor who penned a scathing essay about the stupidity of new (yet widely accepted) medical procedures, his patients, and the laziness of his fellow doctors, I don’t think any of us would be encouraging him to stay in medicine. Likewise, it seems like it would be best for everyone for him to give up that tenure line and let someone else have a shot.

Brian, Associate Professor at Large Midwest U, at 11:10 am EDT on November 1, 2008

Grow up

What a pathetic, self-pitying, narcissistic article from a coddled, insular nerd. You are perfect and everyone else is inferior — you aren’t even self-aware enough to grasp how preposterous that mental construct is. You can’t even handle a whiny college student complaining about a grade? Sheesh — go get a job in the real world.

RDF, at 3:10 pm EDT on November 1, 2008

Learner-centered?

Does “learner-centered” include “Top 10% students” who only score 950 on the GRE? I saw more than a few.

The truth is known and empirically established. No amount of psycho-pap and “academic” puffery can hide it.

How many hiring organizations seek self-centered persons? News-flash: not many.

Unapologetically for Performance, at 3:10 pm EDT on November 1, 2008

Good! Leave!

I really, really need a job, and a gig “coddling” your liberal arts college students sounds like an absolute dream. If you don’t want your job, it’s your responsibility to leave the academy and open up a space for someone who does.

Dina, at 3:10 pm EDT on November 1, 2008

To Frizbane

I agree.

In particular, you must “remember that the longer they taught, the more systemic barriers stood in the way of their serving their students well.”

This exemplifies what is wrong with mathematics instruction today, and what will become forever more wrong tomorrow, and the next day, and every year after that, until we revert back to what actually worked.

No wonder about such of the frustration. We may extend this to other disciplines as well. Education “authorities” have decreed that their knowledge has more wisdom than all previous humanity’s.

DFS, at 9:30 pm EDT on November 1, 2008

Quality of College Education

I think that any college president worth his or her salt would set up an e-mail mailbox to which faculty can submit essays, or other written subject intensive work by their near graduation students to enable the president to judge how well the college is doing. The written work would be “worst example” outputs, relevant because these students are near graduation and have gotten this far by the system as it now exists,

Stanislaus Dundon, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR at UNIVERSITY OF San Francisco, at 1:00 am EDT on November 2, 2008

unqualified opinion...

As a senior in high school, readily approaching the collegiate scene, I find this dismal news. The school I attend is, I think, more academically challenging than most high school, and intellectually elevated, relatively because admission requires a certain IQ. In my school I see the same trends John Smith desribes, but as it’s high school I didn’t think this was of actual concern. This reminds me of a documentary (whose topic I thought was too broad and wasn’t entirely expressed in the film) called 2 million minutes that compared the academic experiences of american, indian, and chinese high school students. This however, is much more in depth and qualified to comment on the topic. I hoped that the scholastic decline in America was a myth within the elite collegiate community, but “Smith” lends me no such hope. The comments on this piece however express dissent....hmmm..

Regardeless of the accuracy, I think Smith is a good techer and I have met many good, influential, teachers at my school, 3 I think, and I completely disagree that smith is “doing a genuine service to the better students by leaving.” The fact that you recognize a flaw is notable, and though I don’t disagree with your decision to pursue something that is more appealing to you, I don;t applaud it. Yes you need to modify your own career for the sake of your own happiness, but only your resignation will leave a legacy that advocates rigorous, serious academic. You should do something else to make an impression on the deflated, unmotivated system.

Also, I think you wrongly blame the students. The entire system of education has evolved such that the causes of your students’ lifestyles are complex and deep-rooted. Overall, I think the idealism mentioned is very real and correctly noted, but it is disappointing to find this article, especially for someone in my situation. It is sad that an ethical, motivated, and qualified educator should leave the system with such scorn, but the fact that dissent exists in the academic community is evidence of independent thought and creative activity, something I hope is never lost

hmmm what to think, at 5:30 am EST on November 2, 2008

Back in my day...

While I tend to agree with Mr. Smith’s opinion, I can’t help but feel that college students’ laziness is a result of the changing nature of college and its place in American society, rather than the students and/or professors. College is no longer a high honor and a privilege for most middle-class teenagers, but rather an obligation, and anything viewed as such will automatically be taken on with less zeal and fervor. No one opts not to go to college because they feel they aren’t emotionally or intellectually ready for its rigors. As a result, professors have no choice but to capitulate to student’s expectations, else risk having to fail entire cohorts of freshmen.

Furthermore, Mr. Smith’s opinions carry a tinge of bitter, old fashioned curmudgeon-ism. I’m sure there’s a way, after all, to use technology in the classroom or to integrate experiential teaching without resorting to dumbing down lectures or inflating grades. Mr. Smith’s personal reluctance to embrace new teaching methods has nothing to do with falling standards in higher education.

Finally, Mr. Smith’s situation is largely circumstantial. In every college, even in the mediocre ones, there will be bright, motivated students who graduate and receive jobs immediately without ever taking accounting or Shakespeare. I should know, I am one. Perhaps if he wishes to be among more bookish students, he should find a job not outside of academia, but at an academic institution where more students value the volume of books read over the volume of beer imbibed. Those types of colleges exist — they’re the brick ones covered in ivy.

Olga Khazan, ideologically-motivated and math-challenged drone at at an NGO, at 11:15 am EST on November 2, 2008

I understand the writer’s frustration, though I do not teach at a fancy liberal-arts school nor at one where ivy grows on bricks. It would be nice to have ivy, but it is hard to grow in a place where tumbleweeds occasionally hurtle past. We spend much time bewailing our lack of ivy. Most of my students are the first in their family to attend college. Do I have students who fit his description? Sure. I also have students who do well, indeed very well. I am thankful to be a college professor, no matter what frustrations I face. If I am also really honest with myself, I also realize that a fair amount of that frustration with students, colleagues, and the Academy, is just frustration with myself. There is a solution for that. It is called getting back to work.

Bruce C. Brasington, Professor, at 12:30 pm EST on November 2, 2008

I Think It Is Called Life

For what it is worth, into every life falls frustration. Frustration at the inadequacy of self, of those we serve, of those who have some degree of power over our lives. In the academic sense, this includes students, colleagues, and administrators. But you would find the same in any line of work. Indeed, you would find the same if you stayed home every day for the rest of your life.

I think everyone in the world reaches the point where they have to figure out a reason to stay—at their job, in their family, in mortal life itself. For me, I have had to create a world of meaning in a context where that meaning may not be ratified by any others. That’s tough to do, but I think it is the only way. I only do research that I believe could be a gift to the world, to make a difference. I teach the way I would want to be taught—with enthusiasm and high standards. And in a class of 200, there will be 10% who will go on to take every class I offer, and I will mentor them and help them create their own gifts to give, and in turn they are a great gift to me.

And as for colleagues and administrators, they only have as much power over the tone of your life and the quality of your research and teaching as you give them. Learn to tune them out, learn to unpluck their fingers from your heart strings. Live YOUR happy, productive, meaningful life, even if there is no validation from your peers.

In the end, that is all any human being can do.

Professor in the West, Professor, at 12:30 pm EST on November 2, 2008

The results are clear

I left academia 12 years ago and have been trying to hire high quality thinkers (and doers) ever since. The process has been disappointing and enlightening.

Almost universally, those whose primary education was in the US are completely unable to think critically or work collaboratively on difficult problems. I realize that there is a serious sampling bias because the candidates that I see from other countries have typically undergone fairly strict selection before I see them while US educated candidates may not have done so, but I see a strong difference even with candidates from highly selective universities.

Interestingly, and to the credit of American universities, I do not see a comparable problem with students who had Russian, Chinese or western European primary education, but attended a selective US university for their undergraduate degree. The problem appears to be largely isolated to the US primary education system. The loafing students described in the original article exactly fit what I see as an interminable line of impossibly unqualified job applicants who can’t understand why I need people who can think and won’t hire those who can’t.

Assuming my observation reflects reality as opposed to some systematic error on my part, it has several logical consequences.

Firstly, the US is increasingly dependent on other countries for educated and motivated workers. If, for whatever reason, those immigrants stop coming, our technical leadership will evaporate as quickly as the current crop of hard-working innovative technologists move out of day-to-day building of new products. If we stop allowing them to come through stricter immigration policies, the results will be the same.

Secondly, “learner centered teaching” is not a solution. It is a failing work-around. Yes, it is true that unmotivated learners do not benefit from traditional teaching, but they don’t benefit enough from non-traditional teaching to be worth hiring, either. We can talk about “adapting to a changing culture” all we want, but the results aren’t as nice as the rhetoric.

Finally, higher education in the US isn’t as broken as it sounds. The biggest problem is that institutions of higher education are being much too accommodating for the failures of primary education. As a whole, I think that US universities do an excellent job for qualified students.

Ted Dunning, CTO at technology company, at 3:30 pm EST on November 2, 2008

What about Englightenment Ideals?

The problem with the modern university is that it has abandoned the Enlighenment Ideal that “reason is the sole engine of human progress". By and large, a college education has become a mere credential signalling that one is eligible for entry into a social class entitled for high consumption.

One need only consider the type of degrees offered in the vocations——since when is Business Administration an area of study designed to cultivate the intellect? There are others. But, the menu of degree types that stray from the core disciplines designed to rationalize the cosmos is an indication of what the modern college/university IS NOT.

ElNeuro, at 3:30 pm EST on November 2, 2008

Ivory Tower Blues

I work in higher ed, but not as a professor. It seems to me that the points raised by the author are gaining momentum. I recall informal conversations about quality over the past decade or more, but perhaps we have reached a point where people are starting to become increasingly critical of the situation. I’m reading “Ivory Tower Blues” now and the book provides some compelling evidence to support this author’s points. Perhaps this is the beginning of raising the standards. Let’s hope so!

wepps, at 9:30 pm EST on November 2, 2008

Sick of parasites?

“Parasites like “John Smith,” who are too spineless and self-serving to make themselves useful”

But adjuncts who endure years of underpaid neglect and humiliation in the academe continue their misery year after frustrating year instead of telling the academe to “shove it” and get a job with decent benefits in the real world.Now THAT’S not being spineless... THAT’S being useful...

Boom, at 9:30 pm EST on November 2, 2008

Have you truly identified a shift in the quality and mentality of college students or merely pointed out the difference between yourself (an intellectual and academic) and a fairly inclusive sample of the general population?

fred, at 12:05 am EST on November 3, 2008

I feel your pain

To “Sick of Parasites": You’re not going to get tenure due to a combination of major (probably one in which there is too much competition), age (too many years without full-time academic work), and attitude.

The comments to the effect of “step aside for me so I can be paid to ‘profess’ without threat of firing” delight me. I’ve met people like you. Some of you will succeed, sadly.

I teach English in foreign academia and know tenured staff at institutions where failing is not allowed, except in cases of excessive absence, which must be documented. Sleeping students are not woken. Standardized tests like TOEIC and TOEFL are feared (numbers are scary and they can quantify (in)competence!), ridiculed, and rejected as course subjects, even though scores on those tests will influence some students’ hiring and career prospects. Rather than teach language skills, many colleagues (even natives often hold advanced degrees from abroad and are thus primed to think alike) seek to indoctrinate, using Michael Moore films or Al Gore’s movie without pairing either with opposing content for listening or discussion class. Then there are the hours frittered away in faculty meetings and discussions where egos are displayed and do battle but little or nothing is accomplished, hours when real work—making tests, marking papers—could be done.

I hope “Smith” has skills that can be useful in the real world instead of having to return to university to acquire such skills. From acquaintances who have been in both industry and academia (each often despising the other), I have the impression that coming from academia is possibly a handicap, for the assumption is you’ve been a slacker and, if in a technical field, have chosen theory over applied: maybe you can think but cannot do or deal with real-world problems.

I wish “Smith” the best and suggest that those in tenured posts not be quite so smug: universities do fold (e.g., Antioch College in OH). Ponder what you will do with your PhD in the humanities when your employer goes under because the customers have vanished: BAs have become too expensive, demographics start working against you, your faculty and staff are bloated (and just try getting those who loudly profess equality to agree to across-the-board pay cuts of 10% to keep the business going), and the government has been forced by fiscal reality to quit providing educational loans or other funding to everyone and every institution wanting them.

Roger Godby, IVU, at 5:05 am EST on November 3, 2008

a data point of one

I’m a Junior at a small liberal arts college, Biochemistry major. I’m an A/B student, where the class averages are C+. I neglect my course work to read peer reviewed literature and academic blogs often not related to my major.

The students around me socialize, drink, and administer the student organizations on campus. They hold positions in clubs, fraternities, and work campus jobs. They are learning the politics and organizational skills for becoming a nontechnical employee at a large company. If their future job is not related to their major, it doesn’t really matter if they blow off their coursework to learn the skill set that they need.

I’m hoping for graduate (medical) school after college. I prepare for that through my coursework and reading, but at the expense of developing social skills. If I were to get a cube job at a large company, I may be able to do my tasks well, but I would not be able to engage In the office politics, be blamed for mistakes, not receive credit for my work, and be unable to advance.

My skill set would be completely useless to my classmates in the corporate world, and their skill set would be completely useless to me in the academic world. Which is why they’re learning their skills and I’m learning mine.

Joe, at 5:05 am EST on November 3, 2008

Overinflated Egos?

After reading all these comments I can’t help but shake my head in amusement. I have a doctorate in education and I teach at a small university. No where along the line of my career did I ever pick up the notion that I was a cut above the masses.

Teaching is a passion of mine — but it is a job (hello everyone — wake up and smell the coffee). You get paid to teach. It is a job.

I come from a business environment — there is no such thing as tenure. I think tenure should be eliminated and seasoned professors should compete for positions beside hungry young faculty who are eager to meet the students half way.

I am a tough grader, I expect a lot from my students — they also know I will give as much as I will ask. There are waiting lists for my courses. I don’t just lecture, I engage. They will be called up front to be active participants.

I have had students complain about their grades — we go over the rubrics for each assignment and using this tool, they end up giving themselves the same grade I gave them. Adding up all the assignment grades, they see where their grade really is a C- and not an A. This is not rocket science. They are then educated about their education. They go to their next course and demand to see the course/assignment rubrics up front so they know what they must do to get an A in that class. You can be sure that most will get an A in the next course. My students are not pampered, wealthy, or gifted. I teach at a university in downtown Chicago.

Instructors like John Smith need to realize that it is a job. The school was looking for someone to hire before they came on board and hey will be looking to hire someone when he leaves. No one is indespensible. Everyone can be replaced — and the newer models are always better. The corporate world definitely looks at people as a renewable and recyclable resource.

It is time for education to be run as a business and less as a elite society of scholars. Education is preparing an individual for their future. Education is not creating scholars — we are training individuals for their future employment and also providing them with a base of knowledge and, hopefully, a desire to continue adding to that knowledge by becoming a life-long learner.

Step aside John, there are plenty of highly trained, motivated, passionate, and non-ego inflated individuals willing to step in and teach your classes.

The ivory tower has fallen — time for everyone to wake up and actually work for your paycheck.

Overinflated Ego?, at 11:05 am EST on November 3, 2008

attitude and expectation

It is nice to see this article generating some interest. Anyone teaching at any level of education from high school up to post graduate can probably identify with at least some of the author’s concerns. There is an expectation of entitlement in today’s society of Gen Y and millennium gen learners that the Gen X and Baby Boomer faculty members seem unable to deal with. This is not new. A lot of research has been and is being done into this, and why this is occurring. Your education does not end with your MA or PHD, it never ends. The only constant in our world is change. Go do some research, or talk to your friends in HR.Cheers,

Steve, at 12:05 pm EST on November 3, 2008

Time to come down a notch

I left the tenure-track fantasyland 26 years ago, took the Ph.D. off my resume, and succeeded in the business world. It was the profs, not the students, that got me out. A two-hour faculty meeting about a $25 expenditure. Egos. Pettiness. Contempt for students. The usual.

Sure, we should expect quality and dedication from students. If we expect the same from professors, why don’t we include for them a modicum of training on how to teach? No, for most, you just need to know your subject and BS about it. Pathetic.

Only the very few should pursue a single profession for their working life. Tenure and its equivalents stifle personal growth and lead to mid-life crises.

I’m glad you got your butt out of there: there are so many wonderful things to do in life, I’m sure you’ll find one or more of them to do. You’ll mellow out, come down a notch or two, and be more human.

Ranger Jeff, Instructor at SF State Univ, at 3:40 pm EST on November 3, 2008

Sick of Parasites

Oh, for God’s sake! Stop whining and get a job! Get over yourself! I left academia a long time ago when I was in almost the EXACT SAME situation. After I became unemployed, by the time the COBRA ran out, I had a job—outside academia. I didn’t limit the focus of my job search. Hell, buy “What Color is Your Parachute?” Can’t you stretch your imagination to figure out what kind of job someone with a PhD from a top school can get? Jeez! No one could have a PhD in a more useless area than I do for the “real world” (an obscure dead language) but with a PhD, one usually has a certain amount of computer skills and research skills that can apply to lots of other careers.

As for the job oustide academia? Sure, the hours are longer, the vacation is shorter, and none of my coworkers give a rat’s ass where I got my grad degree. But it sure beats hell of out working in academia. The pay is better. None of the publishing crap. And I am much happier.

Anonymous, at 5:20 pm EST on November 3, 2008

Frustration aside, leaving will only make it worse

From the perspective of a current grad student, I sadly couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen many faculty dumbing down lectures and handing out undeserved passing grades. Most of my peers during undergrad were going through the motions or working under the stupid assumption that they were going to be doctors when they couldn’t understand why they had to take Microbiology. For the good students, and the bad who need to be weeded out, don’t abandon the school and speed the decline. I’ve only been a lowly TA at this point, but I understand the pain of entitled students. Please don’t leave students like me wondering why I demand more of undergrads than professors.

Melissa, at 6:40 pm EST on November 3, 2008

you’re worse than your students

You sound like an employer that doesn’t agree with the minimum wage. Sure, grade inflation exists, so accept it. A “C” doesn’t mean the same as it did when you were covered with pimples. Don’t you think that those reviewing the students transcripts (employers, grad school, whomever) are aware of this? By taking this problem, that is not unique to your institution, into your own hands is a purely reactionary, and not positive response. The lack of intellectual curiosity is seen everywhere it is the result of having a TV, rather than a life. Have some sympathy for these little consumers, they are simply trying to swim in this world like you had once done. Stop thinking that you too weren’t repugnant to your professors. Can you honestly say that at 20 yrs of age you were, intellectually speaking, an open and receptive vessel? I doubt it, I bet then, like now, you had it all figured out.

douglas schaw, student, at 11:45 pm EST on November 3, 2008

I Was Afraid No One Would Shoot Me Down ...

Well Overinflated Ego, it certainly took you long enough. There are thirty-two posts between my first post and yours, but finally someone has come along to disprove all of my theories. Let’s see ...

1. “teaching is a job.” [That must be true ... you said it three times.]

2. “tenure should be eliminated.”

3. “education is not creating scholars ... it is training individuals for their future employment.”

4. tough graders have students lining up at their office doors to get into their classes.

5. students really love those rubrics.

6. “education should be run like a business.”

7. our new business-focused universities will rightly treat faculty (and I imagine staff) as “renewable and recyclable resources.”

[Aside: Sorry to interrupt OE’s train of thought, but one of my many pet peeves is changing the name of the Personnel Department to the Department of Human Resources. I’m a person dammit, not a human resource ... and don’t you forget it! Can’t we change the names of those departments back to what they used to be ... and should be?]

8. the newer models (teachers) are always better than the old.

9. old timers can’t meet students half-way anymore ... it takes a young guy to do that.

10. I can only imagine what he means by “the ivory tower,” but it is good to know it has fallen. Kaplunk! That damned thing was casting a shadow over occupational training, one that almost made it invisible. It’s time for you scholars to move on and make way for us training specialists.

I admit it Overinflated Ego, I’m an anachronism ... you’re the wave of the future.

Engagingly yours,

Frizbane Manley, at 11:45 pm EST on November 3, 2008

Good Decision

Good decision — once you lose the desire to be challenged by students, you are no longer qualified to teach.

ACR, at 7:55 am EST on November 4, 2008

I went to an elite liberal arts college as an undergraduate, and I spent graduate school working on finding a way to get a job in one myself. For my first year after my Ph.D., I had a visiting job at a top-30 liberal arts college—and what I found there was much what Dr. Smith finds in his work. While the resources were outstanding and the campus spectacular, and while some of my colleagues and students were brilliant and hard-working, overall the experience of teaching there was depressing. The students were not interested in doing the reading or thinking about difficult issues, the faculty (at least outside the sciences) shied away from challenges and complexities, and the experience seemed nothing like my time in college.

I still believe that there are some elite liberal arts colleges that provide the type of education I received, but maybe only about 10 or so in the whole country. Few of us will be lucky enough to get jobs in places like that, places that still believe in rigor and intellectualism and which also have resources and gorgeous campuses and outstanding students. Indeed, I gave up on that dream and followed a different one.

Now, I am a tenure-track faculty member at a comprehensive college in an urban area. Most of our students are commuters. Most are first-generation college students. Quite a lot come to college not quite prepared for what they will find there. I teach four classes—90-120 student a semester—with no TAs and still have research expectations, along with 35 advisees. But you know what? I know I am making a difference in these students’ lives. Some of my colleagues don’t see it this way, but I can take fulfillment from the students who are engaged, learning, and growing.

There are of course students who are just trying to get by so they get the credential for the job. Some of them drop my class when they discover it is harder than those taught by others. But at least they are content with the Cs they get and don’t challenge their grades. Indeed, we have quite a bit less grade inflation here.

The way I see it, the Dr. Smiths of the world have two choices—learn to appreciate the resources and free time that working at an elite institution gives them, or come teach the masses and value the rewards it provides. Maybe going outside academe will work for Dr. Smith, as it has for some of the people I went to graduate school with. But I think he’ll realize that non-academic jobs are really lacking that spark of discovery—the moment when a student learns something new and expands his or her horizons.

If only I were not so exhausted, if only the carpets were not moldy, and if only my department could afford long distance phone calls, I would love my job. It didn’t take much to get over the elitism of the SLAC—just a realization that students everywhere are lazy and at least the ones at my college really need the education.

ML, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Comprehensive College in the Northeast, at 9:40 am EST on November 4, 2008

I agree with some of what you say but would add a few points.

- if you’re tenured, there’s nothing to stop you from making your class as rigorous as you’d like. I teach ball-bustin’ courses and get lousy evaluations or mixed at best. It can be a little hurtful to read them, which I generally do not.

I have suffered little ill because I protect myself. I make sure I get peer-evaluated every semester; I produce an impeccable syllabus. I follow the procedures of good pedagogy; for example, there are learning objectives for each class. The students completely undercut their case with nonsense comments, like “this class has no goals". Yet the syllabus clearly states them. It gets better over time b/c students avoid my classes if they don’t want to work.

- a lot of these problems would be reduced if universities made a serious effort to evaluate teaching. Customer satisfaction (student evaluations) is a valid outcome but surely not the only outcome (no more than it would be for, say, health care)

- I’m deeply skeptical about claims that current students are going down the tubes. I fear we all forget the stupid things we did when we were younger.

- I’m a faculty member at a top 25 “national” university, and I would concede that the hardest jobs may be those at elite smaller colleges (like Swarthmore). No graduate students to help with reearch, etc., yet some publishing expectations and a good bit more teaching.

- One issue is that this job—like every other one—has good points and bad, and the one you focus on tells us more about you than the job, I suspect.

- I will surely concede that mentoring graduate students at UNC Public Health is far more rewarding than teaching undergrads at Vanderbilt (a former employer). No doubt about that.

good luck in your future endeavor.

Michael Foster, Professor, Public Health at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, at 7:30 pm EST on November 4, 2008

I agree with some of what you say but would add a few points.

- if you’re tenured, there’s nothing to stop you from making your class as rigorous as you’d like. I teach ball-bustin’ courses and get lousy evaluatoins or mixed at best. I have suffered little ill because I protect myself. I make sure I get peer-evaluated every semester; I produce an impecable syllabus. I follow the procedures of good pedagogy; for example, there are learning objectives for each class. The students completely undercut their case with nonsense comments, like “this class has no goals". Yet the syllabus clearly states them. It gets better over time b/c students avoid my classes if they don’t want to work.

- I’m deeply skeptical about claims that current students are going down the tubes. I fear we all forget the stupid things we did when we were younger.

- One issue is that this job—like every other one—has good points and bad, and the one you focus on tells us more about you than the job, I suspect.

- I will surely concede that mentoring graduate students is far more rewarding than teaching undergrads. No doubt about it.

Michael Foster, Professor, Public Health at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, at 7:30 pm EST on November 4, 2008

I sent this essay and the posts to a friend – a retired Political Scientist – who lives in Hawaii. I thought his response was interesting ...

“There is an underlying assumption in all of this; to wit, environmental determinism. It won’t be too long before we realize and can identify the polygenetic mechanisms that code for curiosity. Compulsive learners are no less compulsive than many other compulsives. It’s just that the compulsive desire/need to learn is, one might say, more rational.

Good teachers as well as good students are ‘victims’ of this delightful compulsion. The next challenge is to figure out what has happened to it over the last two generations.

Tom’as in Kona”

Frizbane Manley, at 8:55 am EST on November 5, 2008

Before anyone starts making assumptions...

... let me clear up some things first about my perspective. I am a tenured prof at a large R1 university. I love teaching but in many ways I am forced to agree with Prof Smith. I don’t know that the points he is making are new. They probably are not but this does not make them false. There may be some yearning for the ideal life of the mind that may never have existed. On the other hand, it may also be true that with mass higher education, universities are now full of what some euphemistically call “diversity” but what in reality simply means students with varying degrees of preparation for the demands of college life. Some come to learn, others come because their parents told them to, others come because they need the diploma for whatever job they have in mind. Some want to learn practical “stuff” and dislike abstractions whose immediate usefulness is not apparent to them, yet others delight in going through dense and difficult material with no prospect of immediate gratification. Some come from privileged backgrounds where going to college is simply the thing to do. Others are first in their families to do so. Obviously, they bring somewhat different attitudes to learning.

My problem is that I don’t know what to do about it. How does one address all these, often conflicting, attitudes at the same time? In some settings it may be possible to give students the individual attention they need. But in others... My smallest upper level undergraduate class is usually about 150, the larger lower level lectures are easily 350 or more. As far as I can tell, there is simply no way other than lecturing and although I try to do the best I can to engage the students attention, I am afraid about 20% of each class will invariably be dissatisfied (too much or too little).

And yes, with classes of this size the life of the mind is but a dream. Barring the occasional brave soul who comes to office to talk to me, I almost never get to know any of my students beyond the superficial level in their questions (if they dare ask any in front of such a large audience).

I don’t think the students are the problem. I think that our desire to educate everyone (and we actually seem to be failing in that if recent data are correct) without paying the costs for more professors is what’s causing this. We have hired thousands of administrators whose job is only peripheral to the mission of a university and yet we do not hire enough professors to reduce class sizes. There will be no life of the mind, with or without the snazzy tech the students use (or are lost in) today.

Just Curious, at 10:45 am EST on November 5, 2008

I second that emotion

I gave up some years back. I taught at an elite high schools and colleges and repeatedly ran into the problem of grade inflation. I was chastised for my expectations that my students would do homework.

I’ve found that the academic environment in my field is far more about who you know or where you went to school rather than the quality of accomplishments or teaching. Much of what is taught in my field wouldn’t fly in the professional world in which I now work. Universities have become about making students feel happy and the professors and administrators continue to live off the taxpayers. Few really know what the professional world is like and couldn’t survive if they had to be in it.

Mark, at 5:15 pm EST on November 6, 2008

I’m Leaving

Thank you!

MM, at 5:35 pm EST on November 6, 2008

Smith and others have to add the following points:

For most entry-level jobs university education isn’t required. A secondary school graduate can take up to a year of vocational or technical training and then work right away. Even several supervisory or managerial jobs don’t require college, only specialized training in institutions like business schools.

Universities are supposed to function primarily as research centers and educate people taking advanced education. That is why they have PhDs, large libraries, and various research centers.

Students can go to a liberal arts college as long as they pay for it, and they can do that using money earned from their full-time jobs, just like anyone else who wants to set aside time and money to go on cultural tours, visit museum, watch plays or films, take music or foreign language lessons, and so forth. If communities require such an education for citizens, then it should be taught in secondary school and as part of continuing education.

Secondary school graduates who want to become athletes can go to training camp, those who want to become musicians, actors, or artists can go to conservatories, and so on. If they are good in what they are interested in, then they should excel. The system is idealistic but also very practical: study what you want to study and teach what you want to teach. Employers should not require a college degree for work that doesn’t require such a degree. That way, students who are not really interested in attending university or even college don’t have to.

The hard part involves income generation. Vocational and technical schools will likely find support from industries that need them, but liberal arts schools will have to depend on increasing income and interest among graduates who want to learn for its own sake, and centers like universities will have to depend on the needs of communities for research into various issues.

Ralfy, at 8:35 am EST on November 7, 2008

making a difference

Perhaps I’m too late with my comments since the last comment was posted over a week ago, but I was intrigued by all of the perspectives represented here. I understand how frustrating teaching can be. It has been my occupation and passion for the last 15 years. After earning my Ph.D. in Sociology I had to begin learning how to teach. Other than a week of training to be a proficient TA, I was not provided with any training in teaching. I was then given the nod to inadequately teach my own classes. To say I was petrified is perhaps insufficient to describe my fear of facing 50 undergraduates to teach my first intro course. So, rather than stumble along aimlessly I started doing what I do best—learning. I taught myself all that I could about effective teaching and methods for learning and have continued to pursue this type of research/education ever since.

Admittedly, a passion for teaching does not eliminate the frustration of working in an environment that has, over the past 30 to 40 years, come to resemble more and more the corporate business model—a model concerned with profit even at the cost of quality (I refuse to view students as “products” as it’s dehumanizing and demeaning). I believe the average university/college administrator has been trained/conditioned by the structure of higher education to be much more concerned with the bottom-line rather than high quality education. The model of student as consumer is at least partially responsible for the negative attitudes of students and administrators (as well as professors who accept this model)alike. Once the grade becomes defined as the ultimate product all players are guilty of shortchanging students to some degree—not just the students themselves.

This is why I believe all professors (not just those with Ph.D.s in education) have a responsibility to teach students why learning how to think critically is the most important and necessary “product” of attaining a college education. I understand this may be understood by many in our profession to be far beyond what we should be responsible for teaching, and yet without doing so we cannot expect students who have not had the benefit of exposure to higher education (either through family members or friends who attended college—and there are so many of these students today) to understand exactly for what they are supposed to be reaching. Research shows only about 1% of college students believe that gaining critical thinking skills is the most important outcome of a college education. The vast majority state they are attending college to get a better job. They obviously do not see the essential connection between their thought processes and their later success in the labor market and life in general.

Social inequality is a fact of life, and if we are to enable those students who don’t understand what teaching and learning is all about and how learning to think from varying perspectives may empower them in the workplace, as well as in their lives in general (especially first generation and non-traditional college students) we must be willing to suck up a little frustration and assess and determine what can effectively change their attitudes.

It’s a tough job, but when I help even 1 student to overcome their “cognaphobia” and fear of the possibility of failing out of my class or college, I have enabled that individual to finally comprehend that success in any endeavor can only be attained through using critical thought processes to learn conceptually—the only way any individual gains the ability to apply new knowledge to real life problems. Rather than relying on memorization my students are challenged consistently to learn conceptually in a manner that enbables them to achieve mastery. And this sense of mastery is foundational to all individual’s efforts to change their lives for the better, to be able to learn more, to be motivated to learn more, and to learn at the highest and most abstract levels.

Students in the U.S. have been short-changed by an education system, especially in their early years, that tells them they need only memorize and that will get them an “A.” I even know professors at the institution where I teach who actually “teach to the test” and consider that excellent teaching. So why are we professors so astounded when many of our students do not know how to think critically or read adequately, do not know how to learn conceptually, and prefer to do the least possible work to receive a passing grade? When I get a few students who are critical thinkers I’m not only a trifle shocked, I’m delighted. But that does not mean that I am not responsible for those other students who need even greater effort from me in teaching them how to learn and think. In fact, the satisfaction is even greater when I change such students’ lives for the better because I have also motivated and enabled them to pursue knowledge as a source of empowerment. To think critically means making choices with a clear understanding of options and possible consequences, rather than making decisions in relative ignorance. This is a powerful strategy for not only making positive change in one’s own life, but for society in general (go ahead, call me “Polly” but I refuse to allow someone else’s failures and bitterness to taint my passion for engendering as much positive change as is possible).

If my belief in my own capacity to make a difference in many if not all of my students’ lives may be perceived as somewhat egotistical, it is at least at the same time equally beneficial to the many students who are open to and yearning for the skills and abilities to become more than they are in this moment—but who have never been exposed to the very skills, tools, and learnig strategies they do not yet know they need. This is why I will not be dissuaded from following my passion, no matter how tough the job gets, no matter how many so-called bad administrators, students, or nay-sayers cross my path or get in my way.

If we, the nominal “gatekeepers” of academe and higher learning, do not teach our students how to and why they should think critically, who will? Burnout, a condition I’ve researched, often results when an individual feels they have lots of responsibilities but little control over the means of meeting those responsibilities. Therefore, no matter what any superior or administrator tells you about what you are responsible for as a university or college teacher, you can ameliorate stress and burnout to a large extent by pursuing the repsonsiblities you personally define as most important and rewarding. This provides a sense of control and mastery that does not come when we unquestioningly accept typical university adminstrations’ bottom-line agendas.

Therefore, I heartily suggest that any professor who is frustrated and burned-out by the constraints of corporate higher education and the extreme difficulties produced by the inadequacies of early public education recall the reasons you wanted to become a teacher (not just a researcher)(and it couldn’t possibly have been about the money!). Recall your personal passion for wanting to make a difference and pursue that passion despite the many obstacles that may intervene. If seeing the dawning of understanding in the eyes of a student was even a small part of why you decided to go into higher education, then you will likely avoid bitterness and burnout because no institution or individual can take away how it feels to master teaching in a way that you know without a doubt positively impacts many, if not all, students.

Good luck to you all and may you follow whatever is your passion—as we will all benefit from that!

One more voice...

Jlo, at 8:00 pm EST on November 13, 2008

I’m Leaving

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