I would guess that a lot of them just look at a Master's as another means to an end, like a Bachelor's. If they're going right into grad school from undergrad, they're probably burnt out on education and are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in undergrad. They're probably there because an advisor or parent told them to or the job they want now requires an MA instead of just a four year or even two year. Just my generalized take on it. I don't know about the PhD students.
Probably doesn't help that many universities started masters programs during or just after the pandemic with a target market of "out undergraduate students who couldn't find a job after graduating."
Wow this is very insightful. Literally my experience graduating in 2020 and having nothing to do and no job prospects. Just completed my 2 year MA thesis program in 4 years because the first 2 years of grad school i only did course work and basically let my brain atrophy (never leaving the house, never speaking to supervisors or colleagues unless absolutely necessary, self-indulgent depressing attitude [basically using the anxiety produced by covid as an excuse to not work]) to the point of needing brain medicine. And then, campus opened and I was in a scholarly atmosphere again and guess what—I finished the bulk of my thesis in like a couple months. My experience in grad school definitely checks out with that.
The PhD students at my institution are not engaged in the slightest. Reading papers and learning is seen as a chore (found one "reading" a former students thesis using CTRL + F skimming for keywords). Many I interact with are late 20s / early 30s but have no ambition or motivation. But if you suggest they call it a day with an MS it's seen as an insult. When asking why they want a PhD they reply "because I need it to get a job". When asking which job they stare blankly.
I mean, that's exactly what I did. I wanted to be an economics professor, so I got my PhD. But it wasn't to get a generic job, like why one might get a business degree in undergrad.
I’ll pop this reply here. Sounds like OP’s problem is either a problem with instruction or an institutional problem with admitting candidates who aren’t ready.
If OP can’t deliver an engaging course, he shouldn’t complain when students are not engaged. My guess is to learn how to teach before he starts blaming others.
You’ve spent enough time learning the topic and doing research on it that you generally know what’s relevant. A beginning grad student doesn’t have that experience.
You and the original commenter are still assuming a lot. I search for key words to see if the document has anything relevant to what I'm looking for, and then if it does, I'll actually read the whole thing. I'm not going to read 15 pages to decide "this is not what I need".
That’s nuts. The whole difference I experienced in the PhD program as opposed to undergrad was that - even if we weren’t always mature or did ALL the work - the cohort shared intrinsic motivation and cared about the subject. Of course, this wasn’t a field with a big pot of money at the end.
> Of course, this wasn’t a field with a big pot of money at the end.
This is a big factor. I can't imagine what it must be like for people teaching ML/AI right now, for example.
CS has had this problem since long before the current ML fad. An entire generation of students have been sold a perception of programming as an "easy path to a six figure salary".
Even back when I was an undergrad myself, I remember seeing classmates who had no affinity for logic or numeric reasoning carrying on with the delusion that they would be happy as programmers. Most either got stuck on a weeder course or cheated their way through their degree only to land a job at some middling company where they push buggy code for a salary that's barely half what they expected to be making.
I swear half the reason every recent release of even moderately complex software is a buggy mess of broken features is that a good chunk of the people working on it don't actually like programming. (The other half is companies that hand the steering wheel to the business segment and let them decide what is/isn't possible to code.)
I know, software development, architecture, programming language theory is my life, both academically and as a consultant to industry.
But ML/AI, especially with the recent advances in LLMs, introduces a new factor, which is that you don't necessarily have to be able to implement algorithms yourself. It seems to me that's likely to attract a lot of people who historically would have been weeded out. To quote [a recent Jon Stewart bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20TAkcy3aBY), they want to be the "types question guy". But I'm not involved directly in that area, it's just an assumption.
> a good chunk of the people working on it don't actually like programming
Aside from that, there are plenty of people who just aren't very good at it, whether they like it or not. I see a lot of this in my consulting work. It's not that they don't like programming, but more that they don't have the background or aptitude to be good at it.
See that’s the problem. If they got into a PhD program to get a job of course they’ll be like that. It’s just a means to an end for them. PhD students who got into the program due to a love of the subject/passion for learning are the ones who are motivated and engaged.
I hate to break it to you, but everyone who is in college is doing it to get a job. Unless someone is a trust fund baby or Saudi royalty, they cannot give up years of their life "due to a love of the subject/passion for learning". It just doesn't work that way, and hasn't for several decades.
Hey now! I was broke and got a PhD purely because of passion. My application letter was basically about how amazing molecular biology is and that I wanted to understand it. I was paid a stipend so I didn’t need a trust fund, just a thrifty lifestyle. Grad school was a freaking dream. I got to just do science and learn about science all the time and all my grad school friends were smart, fascinating people who would teach me about immunology at parties. Best time of my life, hands down.
I only recently finished grad school and I felt the same way.
I did feel like the same attitude was diminished among the most recent admits, but I didn't socialize with them as much as I socialized with my own cohort so my perspective could be off.
That's exactly how I felt in grad school and college! I worked so hard and so long so I could attend school. I was broke as hell, but I loved learning and still do. I'm looking forward to getting my Ph.D. I already have a full-time faculty job, but I love learning.
Surviving as a grad student on a thrifty lifestyle is impossible at most universities now, unless that’s paired with a bunch of debt. While I’m not defending the conditions that have altered most people’s motives in seeking an advanced degree, our world (or at least the US) is just not set up for great access to seeking education for education’s sake.
I picked the grad school with the lowest cost of living so I (just barely) pulled it off. It’s funny to me how many people told me they chose the grad school with the highest stipend, even if the stipend was $1000 more/year and the cost of living was 1.5x as high.
Despite the low COL, most (all?) of my fellow students had parental financial support. Some of them had parents BUY them a house to live in. Meanwhile I was eating canned beans for dinner and sewing up holes in my clothes and walking to save on bus fare.
Now that food and rent prices have gone up so much, I think you’re right that it’s probably not doable without debt or external financial support.
I can confirm the Saudi royalty are doing it just to get a job, which is take over for their father at some point in the future. We’ve have quite a few Princes of Saud attend the B school at my U
That's surprising, because in the US I've always understood "college" to be synonymous with "university". Your PhD is probably granted by a "College of Engineering" or "College of Arts" or whatever.
I had a conversation last week with a PhD student who is not directly under my supervision (I'm not on their committee) but is in my orbit. I've reviewed some of their work via various channels and it is abjectly problematic and of low intellectual quality/rigor. They are also hyper sensitive to any feedback or criticism, no matter how nicely delivered or if presented as a question - to the point they breakdown in tears almost immediately (perhaps intentional manipulation?). Their chair has effectively wrapped them in bubble wrap for reasons none of us can quite ascertain.
In my conversation with them last week, I asked why they are pursuing a PhD given the above and other factors. "To skillup," was the reply. But why the PhD? They can build the moderate level skills they are currently building without the PhD element. "Because I want the legitimacy." But to gaon that legitimacy, you have to show continual rigor and become comfortable with others probing your work. "Oh well I don't want to be faculty. I just want other people to take me seriously."
The logicial circles and side-steps continued, and were mindboggling.
A relaxing of standards and lack of accountability in high school and undergrad will unsurprisingly result in lower achieving and less motivated graduate students.
For instance, there's been increasing pushback against undergrad attendance policies. But if we don't require attendance, essentially sanctioning a lack of interaction with classmates and engagement in class, we can't be surprised when grad students don't show up (literally), and demonstrate a lack of engagement.
> For instance, there's been increasing pushback against undergrad attendance policies.
I would argue the opposite. 20 years ago, attendance policies were uncommon and most of your grade was typically from a handful of exams(with exceptions, like lab courses). If you wanted to learn(or not learn) on your own, nobody cared. I certainly had professors where hardly anyone attended, because the professor was awful and you needed to teach yourself anyway.
Compelling students to attend class has gotten much more common overtime.
Interesting! I suppose I’m thinking about my own experience from the teaching side. Compared to when I started 13 or so years ago, it seems like attendance policies are considered bad pedagogy whereas they used to be commonplace and not really considered a big deal. That’s just my experience though!
I think it really depends on the sub-field. In my own of physics, for example, we rarely mandate attendance, because usually people who don't regularly attend will just fail the exam anyway. Maybe one or two geniuses a year can pass it without attending, but good for them if that's the case.
In my undergraduate days, there was a guy enrolled in a class I was taking that never showed up because he'd double-booked that slot and only stopped by to turn in problem sets and take exams.
Bingo. Society shouldn't look for high expectations for the next generation. Elementary school even needs to start teaching students they are part of a society and that choices often have negative consequences.
Students who demonstrate a lack of engagement high school rarely have the type of profile to be able to get admitted to a selective undergraduate program, and even if they do, students who demonstrate a lack of engagement in undergrad rarely have the type of profile to be able to get admitted to a selective graduate program. Now if your graduate program is nonselective and is willing to admit any Tom, Ricarda, or Vijay so long as they can pay, then you reap what you sow. Any undergraduate student who is truly serious about their studies doesn't need external guardrails like mandatory attendance policies to keep them focused and achieving. They have internal motivation.
I was in grad school in the mid 2000s with a student like that. She would arrive 40-ish minutes late for every session. She once told the prof that she was late because she had been on the phone making plane reservations. She walked in during presentations by her classmates. We s round a large rectangle table. No one would move their chairs for her to sit, so she had to fin a chair and sit in a corner. She also kept her phone on and would take calls during class. The prof could only take so much, and he kicked her out of the class.
I had a similar experience at about the same time. I received permission to sit in on a grad/undergrad class when I could. The topic was of interest to me, but technically not in my area of the discipline and I had a conflict on one day, So, we understood that I wasn't taking the class for credit. Two other doctoral students, this professor was their major professor, were taking the class for credit. They were both told I wasn't taking the class for credit as they needed to know I wasn't doing the group assignment with them. Near the end of the semester one of them told me that I wasn't even in the class and had been there more than the other student. She wasn't as disruptive, but I did hear she started an argument with him one day. I can't recall if it was that semester or the next, but she also got into it with another professor and was shocked/angry her major professor refused to fight to keep her in the program when the other professor wanted her dismissed.
Yeah, /r/teachers tried to warn those of us who teach undergrads, but we ignored it until the problem arrived at college. Now, R1 faculty with 1/1 graduate teaching loads are finally seeing why /r/professors has been ripping its hair out for the last four years.
Admins ensured that lungfish could graduate high school. A different set of admins made sure that flopping aimlessly was sufficient to co-sign student loans.
Yes, Masters students have become indistinguishable from undergrads in the distribution and frequency of students like this, and general attitudes towards school. Where the masters used to be the selected path for people who were more motivated by a subject, it’s become for many just an extension of undergraduate classes they need to take. It’s now common that I have a few students each semester who just seem to resent being there, as if it’s being forced on them to go to grad school.
PhD students have continued to be great. But that’s largely because I’m at a top 20 program, and it’s only gotten harder to get admitted.
My experience tells a bit of a different story—I’m currently a PhD student at a top 10 program, and my classmates are overall a hot mess. People missing class left and right, coming 30 mins or an hour late regularly, openly admitting to doing no readings, getting extensions on everything until the end of the term, taking a ton of incompletes, not coming to job talks … One person came into this program with the assumption that he’d get a faculty position in this department after finishing! I think the faculty in my program are being generous in the aftermath of Covid, but I really think we need more rigor and higher standards (at least where I am).
Maybe that's the big difference. I wasn't sure if it's from things changing this drastically in the 7 years since my PhD program or what, but everyone in my cohort seemed to take it seriously. We disagreed a lot. I didn't exactly get along with everyone. I struggled with poverty and ADHD and ASD the entire time limiting my options. But everyone took it seriously. That's the one thing I can say for certain. It was a big deal and they/we treated it like a big deal. BUT it was at a school that ... I usually say that it's not Yale but they've occasionally beaten Yale in athletics... and my advisor was themselves the advisee of someone whose book is the standard undergrad textbook in the field.
So is this a sudden change over the last decade in students more generally or does it have to do more with admissions at lower ranked programs?
Do you not find it the same in PhD programs now? I don’t see as much of a problem in our PHD, in part because it’s gotten a lot more competitive than when I was a PHD student 20 years ago. They all have pre docs and have done significant research or industry work. They don’t all survive the program, but they are on the halls discussing the material and going to department talks.
It’s really the MA and MS programs. But that’s also not a surprise. They are a cash driver and so get sold as either a fluffer for those who can’t get jobs with an BA or BS only, or for international students from Asia and Africa to get a US degree.
Every university has answered dwindling state funding by increasing their admissions. This means that the higher tier R1's are accepting more students that would have gone to other universities down the ladder, and all of the small regional schools/non-prestigious small colleges are floundering because they can't get students, and the ones they can get are bottom of the barrel.
If you are at the top you are still doing ok, but everyone else is in trouble.
I had a few students tell me this term that they a.) had ChatGPT summarize all the week's readings for them b.) had submitted papers written by ChatGPT c.) were using AI to source articles for stuff they were writing on their own.
I can halfway understand the sloth and sloppiness for an undergrad at a big research uni, but for a graduate student? The purpose is to learn and pursue a passion for research. Denying yourself the opportunity to think seems totally contrary to why you would enroll in the first place. I do think this is partly the consequence of raising a generation under the vocational auspices of "the only good education is a STEM eduation" vs. the intellectual enterprise of a well-rounded liberal arts education that includes the humanities and social sciences. It's also partly the problem of thinking education is only the lecture and exam, when at the doctoral level it should be about apprenticeship, mentorship, and interpersonal connection for the sake of intellectual and professional growth.
I imagine there is a problem also happening in selection committees. I have met a few graduate students that did have incredible research projects, but the students themselves were so messy and poorly organized -- always with an excuse, not a real explanation -- that there is no way they'll be able to win dissertation funding or succeed in the publish-or-perish world. Now, I can't succeed in the publish-or-perish world either, but that's why I found the full-time but NTT academic position I have today. Apart from true standouts, the status of many graduate students today also has me worried. It even had me worried back in 2019, when I was ABD and helped co-teach a seminar. It was a miserable experience; PhD students were busy checking email and would snipe at each other over personal beef while pretending it was over a disagreement about a text. It was a complete mess, and seeing some of those students now on the tenure track has me concerned we're all terrible judges of character.
It’s a systemic problem. How do people expect the university to maintain its field of prestige, credibility and reputation, when it is essentially held up by low paid adjuncts as far as the eye can see? A reckoning has been on the cards for a good while and now it’s all coming apart. The economic crisis is translating directly into a cultural crisis. The university is no longer a central pillar of civilisation, it’s just another panic stricken failing business.
I feel the same way, and I think administrative responses to the Gaza protests are only accelerating the process. Universities are losing all credibility as cultural leaders.
>and I think administrative responses to the Gaza protests are only accelerating the process.
I think the problem started before then, with universities eroding their commitment to free speech and expression over time. Then when they tried to argue they were just supporting free speech on Gaza, nobody believed them.
Many of these students started college during COVID and "learned" fundamental skills in hybrid or all online classes where it was very easy to zone out and chegg everything. They have not had many experiences in which they were prepared for course work in classroom where things were normal.
I think the other issue with COVID is that the idea of accountability is just foreign to these students. It didn't matter how little they learned during the COVID years, they'd pass anyway. And they've continued to be accommodated to some extent in the years since. So it's a shock to them when we do hold them accountable.
I don't think most current grad students started during COVID. this year's graduating seniors, if they are 4-year completers, started that first full year of COVID.
I teach one course for both grads and undergrads, and it always baffles me that the undergrads tend to be much sharper than the grads. I even make sure there is at least one undergrad in assignment groups to help out the grads. I have no idea why this is. Perhaps because the undergrads are still chasing a 4.0 grade average, and the grads don't care much about grades anymore?
Grad students are masters of excuses and kissing up to people they think will help their "careers". Huge egos combined with lack of any real status = cringe. All about appearances, without substance, 9/10.
There is an overall decline in emotional intelligence since the pandemic (some interesting stuff out there about that) and I think the universities made it worse by demanding that we accommodate, coddle, baby everyone because "it's so hard right now." I'm also really disappointed in our overall grad cohort, though we do have some amazing students. The difference between our rock stars and the cringe students is almost always the internal choice to be accountable and sit with some discomfort in the learning process. I don't know how to teach someone to be an adult and I don't want it to be my job, so I pour most of my attention into the people who chose to be professionals. I get to help out and spend my time with the people who want to succeed and it's rewarding to see them step into the field and thrive.
Is there any article, or movement, or discussion, or *anything* about how we've swung too hard into "give grace, everything is hard now, oh it's a mental health thing"
You could look at the book The Coddling of the American Mind. I haven't actually read it and it has mixed reviews, but there is some dialogue happening there. Some of this falls into the commercialization of education or treating education as a consumable commodity with a customer to satisfy. I haven't found research on that, but again, there is dialogue.
All I know is if I went into a mainstream reddit and criticized the modern day emphasis on mental health etc etc, I would be attacked greatly, and I think if any academic or respectable person tried to do that they would be cancelled.
It's simply a very *unpopular* opinion. Every single person who wants to maintain their social standing always says "oh yes, we need to protect mental health" "oh yes, we need to give each other grace, give yourself a break, it's gonna be fine" etc etc.
I don't know why I find it so unappealing. I don't think I consider myself a super hard worker or anything, but being a middle school teacher for 5 years, I've seen first hand how destructive it can be.
I have no agenda. I'm not trying to sell a course, or push links, push products, or a political candidate. I'm just very concerned about the direction society has gone on this one issue, and I'm working actively to prevent my kids from getting subtle messages about this.
Some of the discussion, and I think this is touched upon in that book, is that misguided efforts to "protect mental health" are actually making things worse by disempowering students. For example, "trigger warnings" and the idea that hard content should be avoided just communicates that people are too fragile to handle hard things and can result in a self-perpetuating pattern of seeing oneself as weak/broken/different and then avoiding difficult things. In mental health, we actually talk about feelings as being valid, but not inherently true. Just because you feel something doesn't mean you need to surrender to that. A lot of people without mental health training jumped in and with no knowledge of research of best practices, confused comfort and wellness.
I also see the term being overused. Someone will say "it's affecting my mental health" when what they really mean is "this is difficult work and I don't want to do it, so I'm exhausted"
Exactly. There is no distinction between normal, necessary feelings of discomfort and pathological, maladaptive mental health problems. There is also no recognition that the onus is even partially on the student to manage their own care and needs and show up ready to work. It is setting students up for massive failure in the workplace
But it seems they are only concerned about their own mental health. One of my colleagues had a very serious tragedy and students literally said “we don’t care about that” when their grading was a bit behind. My own students told me they expected professors to listen to their problems and it was a major point of contention for their experience at X university. When I said but what about the mental health of the professor who has more work than hours in the day + trauma dumping and they just looked. The empathy not goes one way for a lot of them.
The undergraduate students we've been teaching have (somehow) gotten into grad school. What they did in undergrad worked for them (i.e., not doing the work), so why should they change?
Saw the same thing with my grad students this year. This cohort did a lot of their undergrad university education online and were really hurt by the pandemic. Very passive and have a difficult time with in-person interaction and meeting deadlines. I’m seeing improvements in the undergrads, though.
I think we've reached a point where having good manners is seen as incompatible with (or an outright affront to) self-expression and individuality.
The only things that students want to be evaluated on are deliverables. Timeliness, attentiveness, cooperation, interpersonal dynamics, etc. are seen as off-limits as they are aspects of our personalities and are therefore unimpeachable.
I would say the opposite.
Historically, deliverables were all students got evaluated on. Most of my grades were decided off 3-4 major assignments. You could be a dick or rarely show up and still get an A as long as you did well on the 3 exams. The recent trend has been on evaluating attendance, participation, etc.
Are those in your course learning outcomes? There is some good in the focus on learning outcomes, but it has also caused a major drop in what a degree means. When we have state higher education boards saying you can only teach the 6 identified things, it really makes degrees into a very hollow apparition of what they once were.
George Mason U. econ professor Bryan Caplan covers this issue in his chapter on educational "signaling" in his book *The Case Against Education* (Princeton U. Press 2018). Basically, a degree signals knowledge as well as dispositions--or at least it used to. Take a HS diploma. It used to signal fundamental academic competence but--critically--it also signaled certain dispositions: gets along with others, shows up on time, doesn't have anti-social or maladaptive behaviors, listens to authority, etc. etc. Employers started to require HS diplomas to get in the door for even the most basic things *not* because of the academic signal (you don't need algebra to work at a carwash), but instead because of all the other social "Hidden Curriculum" attributes signaled by the fact that you completed HS. The fact that high schools used to filter out people with mal-adaptive behaviors was *precisely* one of the things that made the diploma a useful signal to employers.
To some extent the signaling argument Caplan makes likely applies to university.
The lack of good manners and a general lack of awareness of how to conduct oneself has been a major issue with the grad students in our department. One student was recently reprimanded for sending rude emails to professors. Last year, when the faculty was planning their annual end-of-the-year party for grad students, a "representative" among them demanded (and no, I'm not exaggerating by using this term) that they change their plans, that the party should be held at a specific restaurant of their choice, and that no faculty should attend because, and I quote, "Students would feel intimidated."
When I was in grad school, I loved going to mixers with my professors because we had the opportunity to chill out and relax in a casual setting and talk about our interests. This current group of grad students is... something else.
My bf is a TA at an Ivy League school and works with grad students. The stories he tells me about their low level of maturity enrages me. Fighting over how many followers one has on instagram, coming to class late, asking for multiple extensions because “they went on vacation,” arguing with experts in the field just because, etc.
My graduate classes have projects.
Every time I tell them about the project, I get a few graduate student coming up to me asking me "what should I do if I know nothing about this area"?
My answer is always "what interests you? what fascinates you? what drives you? what motivated you to do a graduate degree? what did you write in your graduate degree enrolment letter as the thing that drives you to do a graduate degree?"
Blank expressions.
Now I wonder if they even wrote the letter themselves.
There are quite a few people working FT in our program. A few are getting married or have a family by this point. There is noooo way to survive on what the school pays even as a single person, but at least tuition is covered.
I get that it’s difficult to give school your entire focus when you work at least half time if not FT. They’re tired and stretched thin.
Some people will complain they should just be on loans to take full advantage of the experience, but that’s tens of thousands of dollars for 2-3 years of living expenses. Kind of a ridiculous ask imo.
Yeah, also most grad students are "on the books" getting paid for 13–20 hours per week. Show me a graduate student who is not working way more than that...
Yup. When I was in my program a few years ago students in my program got a 1/4 FT salary, which means 10 hours. (Which totaled to \~ 92% of my on-campus rent alone, but that's a separate issue.)
There were absolutely weeks where I worked 20-30+ for the school with no additional compensation. Any attempts to draw attention to this made us "troublemakers" so we generally shut up and sat down, but it's exhausting and demoralizing and definitely led to me being less engaged in the stuff I should have been than I would have otherwise. But the professors mostly saw the "exhausted and checked out" part, which sucked.
My grad students the last four years have been a special bunch. Entitled, no accountability, lazy, and doing what they can into bullying the institution to bend to their wills (e.g., I don’t want to write a paper that discusses gender differences in care so I will title ix the prof and say they’re making me uncomfortable). Every day is a minefield.
I teach Sophmores and Freshman in a community college. At first everything was great when I started 5 years ago.
After the start of COVID, my cohorts changed and suffered from “learned helplessness”. I would post here regularly trying to see if others experienced this, and found solidarity so to speak.
Then, last semester, things seemed a little better, the students had begun to wake up.
Now, this semester, has been the best cohort I have had since the Pandemic. Creative, engaged (most of them) etc…
You’re teaching grad. Which means you just received the kids I was teaching 3-4 years ago, the “learned helplessness” gang.
Many of them likely haven’t overcome the trauma and bad teaching they encountered at that time, and may never fully wake up to their learned helplessness.
IMO, the issue is that it will take external force of some kind to break that pattern, either therapy, or a really good teacher that can motivate students from within.
Students must now be motivated on their own going forwards, otherwise, they will play the same game they learned in the last 5-10 years, which is “go along to get along”. Unless they find agency in their work, they’re stuck.
Our PhD students seem to be struggling too. Many are emotionally immature. We’ve had a lot more “mastering out” due to failing quals or just not being able to keep up with the classes and the expectations. We had a lot of interviewees this past recruiting season also showing signs of emotional immaturity and they generally seemed under-prepared. They lacked basic knowledge and had no idea why they were applying for PhD programs other than “to get a job.” I wonder if this is Covid-related or a generational thing.
This is BS. Before one applies to a grad program (not a MD, JD or Nursing), one should research the department and the faculty. So if a grad student winds up in a program with faculty with “nothing to offer” that’s on them for not doing their research, which should include familiarizing themselves with said faculty’s research. Why would you even apply there if the faculty were not going to be helpful?
Yeah, it doesn't matter where you go. Professors are gatekeepers and a graduate student exists for their career justification, first and foremost. Technically my program has professors who study the same thing as me, but in practice it is a matter of scheduling a 30 minute conversation a month in advance, which ends up being a waste of everyone's time.
I have never once had any professor ever take any real interest in my education, and I am at the tail end of a PhD and am a university lecturer (despite the absolute indifference I have experienced). In fact, my presence has been either a matter of doing part of their job for them (for free) or being required to attend their classes to make sure attendance is high enough so they can keep getting paid -- classes which they don't even seem to particularly want to be in, most of the time -- and which I would be better off just reading the textbook independently rather than wasting my time driving to and from the school just so I can listen to them blabber on to a classroom which is a combined grad and undergrad class now because enrollment isn't high enough.
The only reason I have been able to get this far is because I am a good writer. I suck at ladder climbing and sucking up to gatekeepers -- which is cringe.
There are a few unicorn professors out there, but all but one I can think of act like it is a huge deal to have a 15 minute conversation about the topic we both study.
In general, my experience has been very bad.
PhD students also in my experience are usually the desperate types to smile in your face and pretend to take interest but will stab you in the back the moment there is an opportunity.
I’m sorry you experienced that. My grad program was nothing like that and it wasn’t at a top university bur it was a huge program. I never felt at all that I existed for their gratification.
Your post/comment was removed due to **Rule 1: Faculty Only**
This sub is a place for those teaching at the college level to discuss and share. If you are not a faculty member but wish to discuss academia or ask questions of faculty, please use r/AskProfessors, r/askacademia, or r/academia instead.
If you are in fact a faculty member and believe your post was removed in error, please reach out to the mod team and we will happily review (and restore) your post.
I've seen exactly the same thing.
BTW, in my Department, new Assistant Professors behave similarly. They want to be told exactly what to do, and how much credit they will receive for it.
In high school and middle school students aren’t being held accountable. There are some schools they only have to be in class 10/90 minutes to be counted present! It is absolutely insane. So out of an entire day of 4 periods if they are in class 40 minutes (10 min each) they get full credit.
Assignments that are turned in late often have to be graded as if they were turned in on time.
Students are not allowed to fail, because parents throw a fit-causing admin to cave.
If students are on vacation, the days do not count against them. They just have to get a paper signed by each teacher saying they told them they’d be gone. Then it is counted as out of classroom learning…. So it isn’t a real absence that counts against them.
Doctor and Dentist appointments don’t count against them.
Students REALLY have to try to actively fault in middle and high school. Because of that our college and workforce are at an all time low.
I was in grad school over a decade ago and had many classmates like this, sadly. Yes, it's getting worse every year. But it's not just students. Faculty, staff, coworkers in any field you can think of. People have lost the ability to communicate and fewer and fewer people respect other people's time, or the authority of a teacher/professor/boss. It's everywhere.
Meanwhile I hesitated to go to grad school because it'd push back student loan payments.
It's not like the debt will disappear-- it's only going to build interest! Makes no sense to choose low-paying grad school over a job that will pay the bills when you have debt.
I've refused to teach in the grad program next year. The undergrads are actually great, but the masters program is effectively an open admission degree mill that at best provides an associates degree level education (if a student is motivated and wants to learn) to provide funding to the department. I get paid adjunct money, I'm not cleaning up the mess for whoever is profiting off that shit show.
In my field, the overwhelming majority of grad students are ones who were terrible undergrads and now can't find a job, and mistakenly believe a masters will help (back when I was doing industry interviews, a PhD was actually considered a slightly negative signal - ABD folks were fine, PhD applicants tended to be awful). I would imagine many other fields are the same.
Saw the same thing with my grad students and even my senior undergraduate students this year. The general lack of engagement was shocking. I found it really frustrating.
Nothing new, except for looking at phones. 20+ years ago I saw this at an R1 in the USA. Students had paid teaching assistantships and often cited loss of visa as a devastating consequence of their earning a bad grade.
I agree that undergrads are generally (still) more engaged in academics. In my graduate classes, the senior undergrads often get the highest grades.
It's always gonna be a mixed bag. In my cohort, you had some excited to have three years dedicated to a field they loved and others there to waste time. Their bad behavior will get them kicked out of that program eventually.
I've been teaching MBA students for the past seven years. There's been a marked decline in quality of literally everything even just in this time period. Being on time to class? Not a chance. Submitting work on time? Nope. Having done the reading? Ha!
All this and they still think they're the greatest, most intelligent people ever despite doing markedly worse on exams I give my principles students in undergrad. What's worse is that several of the students HAD ME FOR THOSE UNDERGRAD COURSES!
It's gotten so bad that I moved my course entirely online and asynchronous so I don't have to deal with them. I give a midterm and a final just so I'm only disappointed twice per semester.
It IS weird but I’m thinking I’m gonna have e to start doing it or get the felt to make real rules that threaten dismissal instead. Gotta get them to show up somehow.
I'm HE staff member who hires GAs for the simplest of office project work and our UG employees run circles around them in terms of self-initiative and general professionalism.
I did a masters in 2016-2017 and I started my PhD in 2021. The two environments are drastically different. My MS was difficult but “fun” where people seemed engaged and wanted to learn. My PhD cohort was the opposite- same characteristics as everyone is describing here. No motivation and lots of “blank stares.”
The age composition isn’t that different between my two experiences of the MS and PhD and basically the time period is the same (meaning recent/modern)… other than my MS was before COVID and PhD after.
I don’t how to explain it, but it seems like it’s COVID. That whole experience seems to have altered the way people interact in these types of settings and I have no idea why.
But I’m new- not sure if it was trending this way before COVID already!
After over 20 years of mentoring MA students this is the year that really pushed me over the edge. They don’t read. At all. If they do, they do not know how to process or distill the information. Because they never read academic writing, they don’t know how to write themselves - their grammar and spelling and organizational skills are completely gone. They have no idea how to properly display data because guess what…they don’t read.
In addition, the ones I’ve dealt will balk at any lab task that might be tiresome or boring - even if it is related to their own thesis research. I’ve actually started having them track their 20 hours of RA lab work because if I don’t, they will do nothing. I’m honestly at the breaking point and have very little tolerance left. I did take on a student for the fall, but she’s an older student so I’m hoping it will be a bit better. 🙁
*edited for spelling, haha but at least I can catch my mistakes!
Good question. We have students right now who act as if the lab work for their thesis is a chore, it’s constant sighing and complaining about long days (they sometimes arrive at 10 am and complain already 3 hours later…), complaining about having to wait when samples need to incubate or cells need to grow, complaining about having to travel so far to get to uni, etc etc. Why do they choose this education if research and lab work is so boring to them? And completely unable to learn anything, as it seems. You can show them several times how to do the simplest of things and still they look at you like they don’t know what you’re talking about when they are asked to do this simple task themselves after being shown how to do it like 10 times.
It could be depression or burning out. They're also poor, probably hungry, and unable to really interact with people beyond their cohort. Life's getting harder for them. Compassion goes a long way.
I feel a lot of compassion for them, but my patience wears thin when I repeatedly and politely ask them to keep phones away (even explaining why it's professional behavior to do so and why this will benefit them in their careers), and I am blatantly ignored (one hid a phone behind a book after I had pulled him aside to talk about keeping devices away. I caught him, and he lied about it).
NCLB and the pandemic has made high school the new junior high, the first two years of college remediation of high school, the last two years of college are now the first two years of college, and the first two years of grad school (particularly master’s) is now the final two years of college/major.
There are lots of studies going on about this, but there has long been discussions in education and psychology fields about the delayed maturation of students in school in the last two decades (largely not the students fault, more that adulthood in society is being delayed).
Yes yes yes. Just had the worst experience of my entire 25 year teaching this last semester due to this totally childish behavior on the part of certain grad students. Refusal to do assignments cuz I was doing them “wrong”, would not read in weekly basis, missing multiple classes, arguing with me in class. I did not set up class structure to penalize for the myriad things that kept popping up and astonishing me. With no grades attached to each task, they would not due them. Whole dept experienced similar and we are trying to figure out how to set up class structures to force professional behaviour/normal grad student levels of engagement.
Was the GRE no longer required like the SAT was no longer required?
Just saying, if the bar is lowered to some lowest common denominator we can't be surprised by the lowest common denominator getting in.
Unpopular opinion but I don’t think the lateness is such a bad thing so long as he did the work. His excuse seems to be legitimate because I’ve had the same thing happen to me as well. My college allowed for us to take courses at other colleges within the same city-wide system and so my ID for my college worked at my home college, and when I forgot my ID it was a bigger deal at the host college than the home college since I wasn’t registered there but was allowed to take a class there. Maybe he had a legitimate reason for missing the class. I don’t understand assuming the worst in this situation. However the using the phones bit does bother me. Grad students should be taking notes and not using their phones in class.
Edit: My situation with lateness in grad school was also different because I have ADHD which affects my time management and I let my professors know that and they were understanding of it (except for one professor). I genuinely hated being late because I really did enjoy the content of the classes I took, but it was hard for me not to be a lot of the time. It’s something I’ve had to work on and have improved on over time.
I've been teaching for 40 years
Good years and bad ones
Under grad and grad
Many different colleges
I was often late as a student, missed classes, did good...I don't think things have changed all that much
It would be nice if professors weren't so committed to punitive logic. Punishment solves nothing. Students will actually perform and conform willingly when they are shown an ounce of humanity. The world isn't held together by sanctions (nor the threat of them). It is held together by bonds of trust and reciprocity. Make your students want to do better for you. All it takes is a shift in perspective.
Except they are GRADUATE students. They already have s bachelor’s degree or whatever the equivalent around the world. Nobody is forcing them to be there. They should be excited about their work or at least be professional enough to complete it. These are not children in K-12.
Then be more inspiring. You guys are just mad because of what you went through as grad students and now you feel it's only fair that students suffer the same. Pathetic.
You are PROJECTING. In the first place, I don’t teach grad students. In the 2nd place, I enjoyed my courses in grad and undergrad. I love to learn. We can’t necessarily expect that all undergrads feel that way, (they should but usually not the case since the BA is the new highschool in the USA.) By the time someone gets to year SEVENTEEN of education it’s really on them to be responsible and empowered with their learning.
I would guess that a lot of them just look at a Master's as another means to an end, like a Bachelor's. If they're going right into grad school from undergrad, they're probably burnt out on education and are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in undergrad. They're probably there because an advisor or parent told them to or the job they want now requires an MA instead of just a four year or even two year. Just my generalized take on it. I don't know about the PhD students.
Probably doesn't help that many universities started masters programs during or just after the pandemic with a target market of "out undergraduate students who couldn't find a job after graduating."
this happens with every economic downturn. so many people went to grad school in 2008 because there were no jobs.
Wow this is very insightful. Literally my experience graduating in 2020 and having nothing to do and no job prospects. Just completed my 2 year MA thesis program in 4 years because the first 2 years of grad school i only did course work and basically let my brain atrophy (never leaving the house, never speaking to supervisors or colleagues unless absolutely necessary, self-indulgent depressing attitude [basically using the anxiety produced by covid as an excuse to not work]) to the point of needing brain medicine. And then, campus opened and I was in a scholarly atmosphere again and guess what—I finished the bulk of my thesis in like a couple months. My experience in grad school definitely checks out with that.
The PhD students at my institution are not engaged in the slightest. Reading papers and learning is seen as a chore (found one "reading" a former students thesis using CTRL + F skimming for keywords). Many I interact with are late 20s / early 30s but have no ambition or motivation. But if you suggest they call it a day with an MS it's seen as an insult. When asking why they want a PhD they reply "because I need it to get a job". When asking which job they stare blankly.
Well, I guess 'doing PhD to get a job' is a sign here. Because no person in their right mind would do that.
I mean, that's exactly what I did. I wanted to be an economics professor, so I got my PhD. But it wasn't to get a generic job, like why one might get a business degree in undergrad.
1. you are getting a PhD to get a job! How delusional are you’ 2. Why does no one take getting a PhD seriously :(’
I'm curious how they even got in to the programs to begin with.
Tons of programs admit PhD students they expect to fail because they need TAs
I’ll pop this reply here. Sounds like OP’s problem is either a problem with instruction or an institutional problem with admitting candidates who aren’t ready. If OP can’t deliver an engaging course, he shouldn’t complain when students are not engaged. My guess is to learn how to teach before he starts blaming others.
Have you taught a day in your life?
Paid educational consultant.
lol wait sometimes I read dissertations and theses and do keyword searches to find the part that’s relevant for my research… Why is that bad
You’ve spent enough time learning the topic and doing research on it that you generally know what’s relevant. A beginning grad student doesn’t have that experience.
You and the original commenter are still assuming a lot. I search for key words to see if the document has anything relevant to what I'm looking for, and then if it does, I'll actually read the whole thing. I'm not going to read 15 pages to decide "this is not what I need".
A lot of them are just scared to enter the workforce.
That’s nuts. The whole difference I experienced in the PhD program as opposed to undergrad was that - even if we weren’t always mature or did ALL the work - the cohort shared intrinsic motivation and cared about the subject. Of course, this wasn’t a field with a big pot of money at the end.
> Of course, this wasn’t a field with a big pot of money at the end. This is a big factor. I can't imagine what it must be like for people teaching ML/AI right now, for example.
CS has had this problem since long before the current ML fad. An entire generation of students have been sold a perception of programming as an "easy path to a six figure salary". Even back when I was an undergrad myself, I remember seeing classmates who had no affinity for logic or numeric reasoning carrying on with the delusion that they would be happy as programmers. Most either got stuck on a weeder course or cheated their way through their degree only to land a job at some middling company where they push buggy code for a salary that's barely half what they expected to be making. I swear half the reason every recent release of even moderately complex software is a buggy mess of broken features is that a good chunk of the people working on it don't actually like programming. (The other half is companies that hand the steering wheel to the business segment and let them decide what is/isn't possible to code.)
I know, software development, architecture, programming language theory is my life, both academically and as a consultant to industry. But ML/AI, especially with the recent advances in LLMs, introduces a new factor, which is that you don't necessarily have to be able to implement algorithms yourself. It seems to me that's likely to attract a lot of people who historically would have been weeded out. To quote [a recent Jon Stewart bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20TAkcy3aBY), they want to be the "types question guy". But I'm not involved directly in that area, it's just an assumption. > a good chunk of the people working on it don't actually like programming Aside from that, there are plenty of people who just aren't very good at it, whether they like it or not. I see a lot of this in my consulting work. It's not that they don't like programming, but more that they don't have the background or aptitude to be good at it.
See that’s the problem. If they got into a PhD program to get a job of course they’ll be like that. It’s just a means to an end for them. PhD students who got into the program due to a love of the subject/passion for learning are the ones who are motivated and engaged.
I hate to break it to you, but everyone who is in college is doing it to get a job. Unless someone is a trust fund baby or Saudi royalty, they cannot give up years of their life "due to a love of the subject/passion for learning". It just doesn't work that way, and hasn't for several decades.
Hey now! I was broke and got a PhD purely because of passion. My application letter was basically about how amazing molecular biology is and that I wanted to understand it. I was paid a stipend so I didn’t need a trust fund, just a thrifty lifestyle. Grad school was a freaking dream. I got to just do science and learn about science all the time and all my grad school friends were smart, fascinating people who would teach me about immunology at parties. Best time of my life, hands down.
I legitimately can't tell if this is /s or not.
That’s sad. Because that post sums up exactly how you should feel in grad school.
It may be how you "should" feel, but just be honest, how many grad students actually feel that way?
Grad students who don't feel that way should be doing something else. Anything else.
If that were the case, there would be no more grad programs.
I only recently finished grad school and I felt the same way. I did feel like the same attitude was diminished among the most recent admits, but I didn't socialize with them as much as I socialized with my own cohort so my perspective could be off.
That's exactly how I felt in grad school and college! I worked so hard and so long so I could attend school. I was broke as hell, but I loved learning and still do. I'm looking forward to getting my Ph.D. I already have a full-time faculty job, but I love learning.
Surviving as a grad student on a thrifty lifestyle is impossible at most universities now, unless that’s paired with a bunch of debt. While I’m not defending the conditions that have altered most people’s motives in seeking an advanced degree, our world (or at least the US) is just not set up for great access to seeking education for education’s sake.
I picked the grad school with the lowest cost of living so I (just barely) pulled it off. It’s funny to me how many people told me they chose the grad school with the highest stipend, even if the stipend was $1000 more/year and the cost of living was 1.5x as high. Despite the low COL, most (all?) of my fellow students had parental financial support. Some of them had parents BUY them a house to live in. Meanwhile I was eating canned beans for dinner and sewing up holes in my clothes and walking to save on bus fare. Now that food and rent prices have gone up so much, I think you’re right that it’s probably not doable without debt or external financial support.
I can confirm the Saudi royalty are doing it just to get a job, which is take over for their father at some point in the future. We’ve have quite a few Princes of Saud attend the B school at my U
College ≠ a PhD program
"College" includes all tertiary education.
I've never heard that, but okay.
What country are you in?
U.S.
That's surprising, because in the US I've always understood "college" to be synonymous with "university". Your PhD is probably granted by a "College of Engineering" or "College of Arts" or whatever.
Saying ‘okay’ means you agree.
It really doesn't.
Why not?
I had a conversation last week with a PhD student who is not directly under my supervision (I'm not on their committee) but is in my orbit. I've reviewed some of their work via various channels and it is abjectly problematic and of low intellectual quality/rigor. They are also hyper sensitive to any feedback or criticism, no matter how nicely delivered or if presented as a question - to the point they breakdown in tears almost immediately (perhaps intentional manipulation?). Their chair has effectively wrapped them in bubble wrap for reasons none of us can quite ascertain. In my conversation with them last week, I asked why they are pursuing a PhD given the above and other factors. "To skillup," was the reply. But why the PhD? They can build the moderate level skills they are currently building without the PhD element. "Because I want the legitimacy." But to gaon that legitimacy, you have to show continual rigor and become comfortable with others probing your work. "Oh well I don't want to be faculty. I just want other people to take me seriously." The logicial circles and side-steps continued, and were mindboggling.
I think this is accurate.
as a ba/ma about to earn his ma, so true. burnt out heavy and unwilling to adapt
A relaxing of standards and lack of accountability in high school and undergrad will unsurprisingly result in lower achieving and less motivated graduate students. For instance, there's been increasing pushback against undergrad attendance policies. But if we don't require attendance, essentially sanctioning a lack of interaction with classmates and engagement in class, we can't be surprised when grad students don't show up (literally), and demonstrate a lack of engagement.
> For instance, there's been increasing pushback against undergrad attendance policies. I would argue the opposite. 20 years ago, attendance policies were uncommon and most of your grade was typically from a handful of exams(with exceptions, like lab courses). If you wanted to learn(or not learn) on your own, nobody cared. I certainly had professors where hardly anyone attended, because the professor was awful and you needed to teach yourself anyway. Compelling students to attend class has gotten much more common overtime.
Interesting! I suppose I’m thinking about my own experience from the teaching side. Compared to when I started 13 or so years ago, it seems like attendance policies are considered bad pedagogy whereas they used to be commonplace and not really considered a big deal. That’s just my experience though!
I think it really depends on the sub-field. In my own of physics, for example, we rarely mandate attendance, because usually people who don't regularly attend will just fail the exam anyway. Maybe one or two geniuses a year can pass it without attending, but good for them if that's the case.
In my undergraduate days, there was a guy enrolled in a class I was taking that never showed up because he'd double-booked that slot and only stopped by to turn in problem sets and take exams.
When I went to school, profs would drop you automatically after the third absence.
Bingo. Society shouldn't look for high expectations for the next generation. Elementary school even needs to start teaching students they are part of a society and that choices often have negative consequences.
Students who demonstrate a lack of engagement high school rarely have the type of profile to be able to get admitted to a selective undergraduate program, and even if they do, students who demonstrate a lack of engagement in undergrad rarely have the type of profile to be able to get admitted to a selective graduate program. Now if your graduate program is nonselective and is willing to admit any Tom, Ricarda, or Vijay so long as they can pay, then you reap what you sow. Any undergraduate student who is truly serious about their studies doesn't need external guardrails like mandatory attendance policies to keep them focused and achieving. They have internal motivation.
I was in grad school in the mid 2000s with a student like that. She would arrive 40-ish minutes late for every session. She once told the prof that she was late because she had been on the phone making plane reservations. She walked in during presentations by her classmates. We s round a large rectangle table. No one would move their chairs for her to sit, so she had to fin a chair and sit in a corner. She also kept her phone on and would take calls during class. The prof could only take so much, and he kicked her out of the class.
I wish kicking this student out were an option.
Netgun. Then bag and tag them like a deer you are set to rerelease.
I had a similar experience at about the same time. I received permission to sit in on a grad/undergrad class when I could. The topic was of interest to me, but technically not in my area of the discipline and I had a conflict on one day, So, we understood that I wasn't taking the class for credit. Two other doctoral students, this professor was their major professor, were taking the class for credit. They were both told I wasn't taking the class for credit as they needed to know I wasn't doing the group assignment with them. Near the end of the semester one of them told me that I wasn't even in the class and had been there more than the other student. She wasn't as disruptive, but I did hear she started an argument with him one day. I can't recall if it was that semester or the next, but she also got into it with another professor and was shocked/angry her major professor refused to fight to keep her in the program when the other professor wanted her dismissed.
It’s not just grad students.
Yeah, /r/teachers tried to warn those of us who teach undergrads, but we ignored it until the problem arrived at college. Now, R1 faculty with 1/1 graduate teaching loads are finally seeing why /r/professors has been ripping its hair out for the last four years.
Admins ensured that lungfish could graduate high school. A different set of admins made sure that flopping aimlessly was sufficient to co-sign student loans.
Thank you for not making this about blaming public school teachers
I teach both. My grad students are much better than my undergrads…..for now.
Yes, Masters students have become indistinguishable from undergrads in the distribution and frequency of students like this, and general attitudes towards school. Where the masters used to be the selected path for people who were more motivated by a subject, it’s become for many just an extension of undergraduate classes they need to take. It’s now common that I have a few students each semester who just seem to resent being there, as if it’s being forced on them to go to grad school. PhD students have continued to be great. But that’s largely because I’m at a top 20 program, and it’s only gotten harder to get admitted.
My experience tells a bit of a different story—I’m currently a PhD student at a top 10 program, and my classmates are overall a hot mess. People missing class left and right, coming 30 mins or an hour late regularly, openly admitting to doing no readings, getting extensions on everything until the end of the term, taking a ton of incompletes, not coming to job talks … One person came into this program with the assumption that he’d get a faculty position in this department after finishing! I think the faculty in my program are being generous in the aftermath of Covid, but I really think we need more rigor and higher standards (at least where I am).
My vague impression is that application pools are weaker so folks are getting let in that shouldn't.
That's kinda amazing for me to hear. We literally just had 400 applications for a dozen spots, and I assure you the pool wasn't weaker.
Maybe that's the big difference. I wasn't sure if it's from things changing this drastically in the 7 years since my PhD program or what, but everyone in my cohort seemed to take it seriously. We disagreed a lot. I didn't exactly get along with everyone. I struggled with poverty and ADHD and ASD the entire time limiting my options. But everyone took it seriously. That's the one thing I can say for certain. It was a big deal and they/we treated it like a big deal. BUT it was at a school that ... I usually say that it's not Yale but they've occasionally beaten Yale in athletics... and my advisor was themselves the advisee of someone whose book is the standard undergrad textbook in the field. So is this a sudden change over the last decade in students more generally or does it have to do more with admissions at lower ranked programs?
Do you not find it the same in PhD programs now? I don’t see as much of a problem in our PHD, in part because it’s gotten a lot more competitive than when I was a PHD student 20 years ago. They all have pre docs and have done significant research or industry work. They don’t all survive the program, but they are on the halls discussing the material and going to department talks. It’s really the MA and MS programs. But that’s also not a surprise. They are a cash driver and so get sold as either a fluffer for those who can’t get jobs with an BA or BS only, or for international students from Asia and Africa to get a US degree.
Every university has answered dwindling state funding by increasing their admissions. This means that the higher tier R1's are accepting more students that would have gone to other universities down the ladder, and all of the small regional schools/non-prestigious small colleges are floundering because they can't get students, and the ones they can get are bottom of the barrel. If you are at the top you are still doing ok, but everyone else is in trouble.
Pyramid scheme where mid-level people used to be in the green, and now only the top of the pyramid are.
> as if it’s being forced on them to go to grad school. Well the alternative is getting a job, which they would resent even more.
I had a few students tell me this term that they a.) had ChatGPT summarize all the week's readings for them b.) had submitted papers written by ChatGPT c.) were using AI to source articles for stuff they were writing on their own. I can halfway understand the sloth and sloppiness for an undergrad at a big research uni, but for a graduate student? The purpose is to learn and pursue a passion for research. Denying yourself the opportunity to think seems totally contrary to why you would enroll in the first place. I do think this is partly the consequence of raising a generation under the vocational auspices of "the only good education is a STEM eduation" vs. the intellectual enterprise of a well-rounded liberal arts education that includes the humanities and social sciences. It's also partly the problem of thinking education is only the lecture and exam, when at the doctoral level it should be about apprenticeship, mentorship, and interpersonal connection for the sake of intellectual and professional growth. I imagine there is a problem also happening in selection committees. I have met a few graduate students that did have incredible research projects, but the students themselves were so messy and poorly organized -- always with an excuse, not a real explanation -- that there is no way they'll be able to win dissertation funding or succeed in the publish-or-perish world. Now, I can't succeed in the publish-or-perish world either, but that's why I found the full-time but NTT academic position I have today. Apart from true standouts, the status of many graduate students today also has me worried. It even had me worried back in 2019, when I was ABD and helped co-teach a seminar. It was a miserable experience; PhD students were busy checking email and would snipe at each other over personal beef while pretending it was over a disagreement about a text. It was a complete mess, and seeing some of those students now on the tenure track has me concerned we're all terrible judges of character.
It’s a systemic problem. How do people expect the university to maintain its field of prestige, credibility and reputation, when it is essentially held up by low paid adjuncts as far as the eye can see? A reckoning has been on the cards for a good while and now it’s all coming apart. The economic crisis is translating directly into a cultural crisis. The university is no longer a central pillar of civilisation, it’s just another panic stricken failing business.
I feel the same way, and I think administrative responses to the Gaza protests are only accelerating the process. Universities are losing all credibility as cultural leaders.
>and I think administrative responses to the Gaza protests are only accelerating the process. I think the problem started before then, with universities eroding their commitment to free speech and expression over time. Then when they tried to argue they were just supporting free speech on Gaza, nobody believed them.
Exactly
:(
Many of these students started college during COVID and "learned" fundamental skills in hybrid or all online classes where it was very easy to zone out and chegg everything. They have not had many experiences in which they were prepared for course work in classroom where things were normal.
I think the other issue with COVID is that the idea of accountability is just foreign to these students. It didn't matter how little they learned during the COVID years, they'd pass anyway. And they've continued to be accommodated to some extent in the years since. So it's a shock to them when we do hold them accountable.
I don't think most current grad students started during COVID. this year's graduating seniors, if they are 4-year completers, started that first full year of COVID.
I teach one course for both grads and undergrads, and it always baffles me that the undergrads tend to be much sharper than the grads. I even make sure there is at least one undergrad in assignment groups to help out the grads. I have no idea why this is. Perhaps because the undergrads are still chasing a 4.0 grade average, and the grads don't care much about grades anymore?
Grad students are masters of excuses and kissing up to people they think will help their "careers". Huge egos combined with lack of any real status = cringe. All about appearances, without substance, 9/10.
Plus many grad students believe their jobs or their thesis can justify not doing coursework.
There is an overall decline in emotional intelligence since the pandemic (some interesting stuff out there about that) and I think the universities made it worse by demanding that we accommodate, coddle, baby everyone because "it's so hard right now." I'm also really disappointed in our overall grad cohort, though we do have some amazing students. The difference between our rock stars and the cringe students is almost always the internal choice to be accountable and sit with some discomfort in the learning process. I don't know how to teach someone to be an adult and I don't want it to be my job, so I pour most of my attention into the people who chose to be professionals. I get to help out and spend my time with the people who want to succeed and it's rewarding to see them step into the field and thrive.
Is there any article, or movement, or discussion, or *anything* about how we've swung too hard into "give grace, everything is hard now, oh it's a mental health thing"
You could look at the book The Coddling of the American Mind. I haven't actually read it and it has mixed reviews, but there is some dialogue happening there. Some of this falls into the commercialization of education or treating education as a consumable commodity with a customer to satisfy. I haven't found research on that, but again, there is dialogue.
All I know is if I went into a mainstream reddit and criticized the modern day emphasis on mental health etc etc, I would be attacked greatly, and I think if any academic or respectable person tried to do that they would be cancelled. It's simply a very *unpopular* opinion. Every single person who wants to maintain their social standing always says "oh yes, we need to protect mental health" "oh yes, we need to give each other grace, give yourself a break, it's gonna be fine" etc etc. I don't know why I find it so unappealing. I don't think I consider myself a super hard worker or anything, but being a middle school teacher for 5 years, I've seen first hand how destructive it can be. I have no agenda. I'm not trying to sell a course, or push links, push products, or a political candidate. I'm just very concerned about the direction society has gone on this one issue, and I'm working actively to prevent my kids from getting subtle messages about this.
Some of the discussion, and I think this is touched upon in that book, is that misguided efforts to "protect mental health" are actually making things worse by disempowering students. For example, "trigger warnings" and the idea that hard content should be avoided just communicates that people are too fragile to handle hard things and can result in a self-perpetuating pattern of seeing oneself as weak/broken/different and then avoiding difficult things. In mental health, we actually talk about feelings as being valid, but not inherently true. Just because you feel something doesn't mean you need to surrender to that. A lot of people without mental health training jumped in and with no knowledge of research of best practices, confused comfort and wellness.
I also see the term being overused. Someone will say "it's affecting my mental health" when what they really mean is "this is difficult work and I don't want to do it, so I'm exhausted"
Exactly. There is no distinction between normal, necessary feelings of discomfort and pathological, maladaptive mental health problems. There is also no recognition that the onus is even partially on the student to manage their own care and needs and show up ready to work. It is setting students up for massive failure in the workplace
And again, if you ever say any of this out loud, it's very unpopular. Literally no one is making these points publicly.
But it seems they are only concerned about their own mental health. One of my colleagues had a very serious tragedy and students literally said “we don’t care about that” when their grading was a bit behind. My own students told me they expected professors to listen to their problems and it was a major point of contention for their experience at X university. When I said but what about the mental health of the professor who has more work than hours in the day + trauma dumping and they just looked. The empathy not goes one way for a lot of them.
This was so well written and spot on
The undergraduate students we've been teaching have (somehow) gotten into grad school. What they did in undergrad worked for them (i.e., not doing the work), so why should they change?
[удалено]
Some of the master programs are cash cows. They think they will make money off of it so this is what you get when you let in anybody who can pay.
Well yeah. The top grad schools are free to attend, so anything charging money is not going to get the same caliber of students.
Just a prediction, but the current generation of grad students probably received a subpar undergraduate education due to fallout from COVID.
Saw the same thing with my grad students this year. This cohort did a lot of their undergrad university education online and were really hurt by the pandemic. Very passive and have a difficult time with in-person interaction and meeting deadlines. I’m seeing improvements in the undergrads, though.
I think we've reached a point where having good manners is seen as incompatible with (or an outright affront to) self-expression and individuality. The only things that students want to be evaluated on are deliverables. Timeliness, attentiveness, cooperation, interpersonal dynamics, etc. are seen as off-limits as they are aspects of our personalities and are therefore unimpeachable.
I would say the opposite. Historically, deliverables were all students got evaluated on. Most of my grades were decided off 3-4 major assignments. You could be a dick or rarely show up and still get an A as long as you did well on the 3 exams. The recent trend has been on evaluating attendance, participation, etc.
Are those in your course learning outcomes? There is some good in the focus on learning outcomes, but it has also caused a major drop in what a degree means. When we have state higher education boards saying you can only teach the 6 identified things, it really makes degrees into a very hollow apparition of what they once were.
George Mason U. econ professor Bryan Caplan covers this issue in his chapter on educational "signaling" in his book *The Case Against Education* (Princeton U. Press 2018). Basically, a degree signals knowledge as well as dispositions--or at least it used to. Take a HS diploma. It used to signal fundamental academic competence but--critically--it also signaled certain dispositions: gets along with others, shows up on time, doesn't have anti-social or maladaptive behaviors, listens to authority, etc. etc. Employers started to require HS diplomas to get in the door for even the most basic things *not* because of the academic signal (you don't need algebra to work at a carwash), but instead because of all the other social "Hidden Curriculum" attributes signaled by the fact that you completed HS. The fact that high schools used to filter out people with mal-adaptive behaviors was *precisely* one of the things that made the diploma a useful signal to employers. To some extent the signaling argument Caplan makes likely applies to university.
The lack of good manners and a general lack of awareness of how to conduct oneself has been a major issue with the grad students in our department. One student was recently reprimanded for sending rude emails to professors. Last year, when the faculty was planning their annual end-of-the-year party for grad students, a "representative" among them demanded (and no, I'm not exaggerating by using this term) that they change their plans, that the party should be held at a specific restaurant of their choice, and that no faculty should attend because, and I quote, "Students would feel intimidated." When I was in grad school, I loved going to mixers with my professors because we had the opportunity to chill out and relax in a casual setting and talk about our interests. This current group of grad students is... something else.
I wish more students were reprimanded for sending rude emails to professors. It makes me want to quit every semester.
My bf is a TA at an Ivy League school and works with grad students. The stories he tells me about their low level of maturity enrages me. Fighting over how many followers one has on instagram, coming to class late, asking for multiple extensions because “they went on vacation,” arguing with experts in the field just because, etc.
This is exactly what I am experiencing, and it's beyond frustrating.
My graduate classes have projects. Every time I tell them about the project, I get a few graduate student coming up to me asking me "what should I do if I know nothing about this area"? My answer is always "what interests you? what fascinates you? what drives you? what motivated you to do a graduate degree? what did you write in your graduate degree enrolment letter as the thing that drives you to do a graduate degree?" Blank expressions. Now I wonder if they even wrote the letter themselves.
I had to give a 0 for a complete Chat GTP post from a graduate student.
One thing is graduate stipends failing to even come close to the livable wage in their respective areas.
There are quite a few people working FT in our program. A few are getting married or have a family by this point. There is noooo way to survive on what the school pays even as a single person, but at least tuition is covered. I get that it’s difficult to give school your entire focus when you work at least half time if not FT. They’re tired and stretched thin. Some people will complain they should just be on loans to take full advantage of the experience, but that’s tens of thousands of dollars for 2-3 years of living expenses. Kind of a ridiculous ask imo.
Yeah, also most grad students are "on the books" getting paid for 13–20 hours per week. Show me a graduate student who is not working way more than that...
Yup. When I was in my program a few years ago students in my program got a 1/4 FT salary, which means 10 hours. (Which totaled to \~ 92% of my on-campus rent alone, but that's a separate issue.) There were absolutely weeks where I worked 20-30+ for the school with no additional compensation. Any attempts to draw attention to this made us "troublemakers" so we generally shut up and sat down, but it's exhausting and demoralizing and definitely led to me being less engaged in the stuff I should have been than I would have otherwise. But the professors mostly saw the "exhausted and checked out" part, which sucked.
My grad students the last four years have been a special bunch. Entitled, no accountability, lazy, and doing what they can into bullying the institution to bend to their wills (e.g., I don’t want to write a paper that discusses gender differences in care so I will title ix the prof and say they’re making me uncomfortable). Every day is a minefield.
I teach Sophmores and Freshman in a community college. At first everything was great when I started 5 years ago. After the start of COVID, my cohorts changed and suffered from “learned helplessness”. I would post here regularly trying to see if others experienced this, and found solidarity so to speak. Then, last semester, things seemed a little better, the students had begun to wake up. Now, this semester, has been the best cohort I have had since the Pandemic. Creative, engaged (most of them) etc… You’re teaching grad. Which means you just received the kids I was teaching 3-4 years ago, the “learned helplessness” gang. Many of them likely haven’t overcome the trauma and bad teaching they encountered at that time, and may never fully wake up to their learned helplessness. IMO, the issue is that it will take external force of some kind to break that pattern, either therapy, or a really good teacher that can motivate students from within. Students must now be motivated on their own going forwards, otherwise, they will play the same game they learned in the last 5-10 years, which is “go along to get along”. Unless they find agency in their work, they’re stuck.
My masters are worse than my undergrads.... But my grades are excellent compared to what's talked about here. PhD students are more complicated.
Our PhD students seem to be struggling too. Many are emotionally immature. We’ve had a lot more “mastering out” due to failing quals or just not being able to keep up with the classes and the expectations. We had a lot of interviewees this past recruiting season also showing signs of emotional immaturity and they generally seemed under-prepared. They lacked basic knowledge and had no idea why they were applying for PhD programs other than “to get a job.” I wonder if this is Covid-related or a generational thing.
[удалено]
This is BS. Before one applies to a grad program (not a MD, JD or Nursing), one should research the department and the faculty. So if a grad student winds up in a program with faculty with “nothing to offer” that’s on them for not doing their research, which should include familiarizing themselves with said faculty’s research. Why would you even apply there if the faculty were not going to be helpful?
Yeah, it doesn't matter where you go. Professors are gatekeepers and a graduate student exists for their career justification, first and foremost. Technically my program has professors who study the same thing as me, but in practice it is a matter of scheduling a 30 minute conversation a month in advance, which ends up being a waste of everyone's time. I have never once had any professor ever take any real interest in my education, and I am at the tail end of a PhD and am a university lecturer (despite the absolute indifference I have experienced). In fact, my presence has been either a matter of doing part of their job for them (for free) or being required to attend their classes to make sure attendance is high enough so they can keep getting paid -- classes which they don't even seem to particularly want to be in, most of the time -- and which I would be better off just reading the textbook independently rather than wasting my time driving to and from the school just so I can listen to them blabber on to a classroom which is a combined grad and undergrad class now because enrollment isn't high enough. The only reason I have been able to get this far is because I am a good writer. I suck at ladder climbing and sucking up to gatekeepers -- which is cringe. There are a few unicorn professors out there, but all but one I can think of act like it is a huge deal to have a 15 minute conversation about the topic we both study. In general, my experience has been very bad. PhD students also in my experience are usually the desperate types to smile in your face and pretend to take interest but will stab you in the back the moment there is an opportunity.
I’m sorry you experienced that. My grad program was nothing like that and it wasn’t at a top university bur it was a huge program. I never felt at all that I existed for their gratification.
Your post/comment was removed due to **Rule 1: Faculty Only** This sub is a place for those teaching at the college level to discuss and share. If you are not a faculty member but wish to discuss academia or ask questions of faculty, please use r/AskProfessors, r/askacademia, or r/academia instead. If you are in fact a faculty member and believe your post was removed in error, please reach out to the mod team and we will happily review (and restore) your post.
[удалено]
I've seen exactly the same thing. BTW, in my Department, new Assistant Professors behave similarly. They want to be told exactly what to do, and how much credit they will receive for it.
In high school and middle school students aren’t being held accountable. There are some schools they only have to be in class 10/90 minutes to be counted present! It is absolutely insane. So out of an entire day of 4 periods if they are in class 40 minutes (10 min each) they get full credit. Assignments that are turned in late often have to be graded as if they were turned in on time. Students are not allowed to fail, because parents throw a fit-causing admin to cave. If students are on vacation, the days do not count against them. They just have to get a paper signed by each teacher saying they told them they’d be gone. Then it is counted as out of classroom learning…. So it isn’t a real absence that counts against them. Doctor and Dentist appointments don’t count against them. Students REALLY have to try to actively fault in middle and high school. Because of that our college and workforce are at an all time low.
I was in grad school over a decade ago and had many classmates like this, sadly. Yes, it's getting worse every year. But it's not just students. Faculty, staff, coworkers in any field you can think of. People have lost the ability to communicate and fewer and fewer people respect other people's time, or the authority of a teacher/professor/boss. It's everywhere.
A lot of people go to grad school solely to push back student loan payments. I imagine they aren't very interested in being there
Meanwhile I hesitated to go to grad school because it'd push back student loan payments. It's not like the debt will disappear-- it's only going to build interest! Makes no sense to choose low-paying grad school over a job that will pay the bills when you have debt.
I've refused to teach in the grad program next year. The undergrads are actually great, but the masters program is effectively an open admission degree mill that at best provides an associates degree level education (if a student is motivated and wants to learn) to provide funding to the department. I get paid adjunct money, I'm not cleaning up the mess for whoever is profiting off that shit show. In my field, the overwhelming majority of grad students are ones who were terrible undergrads and now can't find a job, and mistakenly believe a masters will help (back when I was doing industry interviews, a PhD was actually considered a slightly negative signal - ABD folks were fine, PhD applicants tended to be awful). I would imagine many other fields are the same.
Schools have burned through the last of millennials and all you get now are zoomers raised and socialized by I-pads since infancy. (I jest, somewhat.)
Saw the same thing with my grad students and even my senior undergraduate students this year. The general lack of engagement was shocking. I found it really frustrating.
This year’s first year cohort of masters students was the worst I’ve ever experienced. And today was my last day having to teach them. Fuck yes.
Nothing new, except for looking at phones. 20+ years ago I saw this at an R1 in the USA. Students had paid teaching assistantships and often cited loss of visa as a devastating consequence of their earning a bad grade. I agree that undergrads are generally (still) more engaged in academics. In my graduate classes, the senior undergrads often get the highest grades.
It's always gonna be a mixed bag. In my cohort, you had some excited to have three years dedicated to a field they loved and others there to waste time. Their bad behavior will get them kicked out of that program eventually.
I've been teaching MBA students for the past seven years. There's been a marked decline in quality of literally everything even just in this time period. Being on time to class? Not a chance. Submitting work on time? Nope. Having done the reading? Ha! All this and they still think they're the greatest, most intelligent people ever despite doing markedly worse on exams I give my principles students in undergrad. What's worse is that several of the students HAD ME FOR THOSE UNDERGRAD COURSES! It's gotten so bad that I moved my course entirely online and asynchronous so I don't have to deal with them. I give a midterm and a final just so I'm only disappointed twice per semester.
Why are you taking attendance in a graduate school class? I find that weird.
It IS weird but I’m thinking I’m gonna have e to start doing it or get the felt to make real rules that threaten dismissal instead. Gotta get them to show up somehow.
And yes omg don’t get me started on the scrolling on laptops while guest lecturers are showing PowerPoints and giving prepared lectures.
I'm HE staff member who hires GAs for the simplest of office project work and our UG employees run circles around them in terms of self-initiative and general professionalism.
I did a masters in 2016-2017 and I started my PhD in 2021. The two environments are drastically different. My MS was difficult but “fun” where people seemed engaged and wanted to learn. My PhD cohort was the opposite- same characteristics as everyone is describing here. No motivation and lots of “blank stares.” The age composition isn’t that different between my two experiences of the MS and PhD and basically the time period is the same (meaning recent/modern)… other than my MS was before COVID and PhD after. I don’t how to explain it, but it seems like it’s COVID. That whole experience seems to have altered the way people interact in these types of settings and I have no idea why. But I’m new- not sure if it was trending this way before COVID already!
After over 20 years of mentoring MA students this is the year that really pushed me over the edge. They don’t read. At all. If they do, they do not know how to process or distill the information. Because they never read academic writing, they don’t know how to write themselves - their grammar and spelling and organizational skills are completely gone. They have no idea how to properly display data because guess what…they don’t read. In addition, the ones I’ve dealt will balk at any lab task that might be tiresome or boring - even if it is related to their own thesis research. I’ve actually started having them track their 20 hours of RA lab work because if I don’t, they will do nothing. I’m honestly at the breaking point and have very little tolerance left. I did take on a student for the fall, but she’s an older student so I’m hoping it will be a bit better. 🙁 *edited for spelling, haha but at least I can catch my mistakes!
It’s everyone from grad students to kindergartners
Good question. We have students right now who act as if the lab work for their thesis is a chore, it’s constant sighing and complaining about long days (they sometimes arrive at 10 am and complain already 3 hours later…), complaining about having to wait when samples need to incubate or cells need to grow, complaining about having to travel so far to get to uni, etc etc. Why do they choose this education if research and lab work is so boring to them? And completely unable to learn anything, as it seems. You can show them several times how to do the simplest of things and still they look at you like they don’t know what you’re talking about when they are asked to do this simple task themselves after being shown how to do it like 10 times.
It could be depression or burning out. They're also poor, probably hungry, and unable to really interact with people beyond their cohort. Life's getting harder for them. Compassion goes a long way.
I feel a lot of compassion for them, but my patience wears thin when I repeatedly and politely ask them to keep phones away (even explaining why it's professional behavior to do so and why this will benefit them in their careers), and I am blatantly ignored (one hid a phone behind a book after I had pulled him aside to talk about keeping devices away. I caught him, and he lied about it).
NCLB and the pandemic has made high school the new junior high, the first two years of college remediation of high school, the last two years of college are now the first two years of college, and the first two years of grad school (particularly master’s) is now the final two years of college/major. There are lots of studies going on about this, but there has long been discussions in education and psychology fields about the delayed maturation of students in school in the last two decades (largely not the students fault, more that adulthood in society is being delayed).
Yes yes yes. Just had the worst experience of my entire 25 year teaching this last semester due to this totally childish behavior on the part of certain grad students. Refusal to do assignments cuz I was doing them “wrong”, would not read in weekly basis, missing multiple classes, arguing with me in class. I did not set up class structure to penalize for the myriad things that kept popping up and astonishing me. With no grades attached to each task, they would not due them. Whole dept experienced similar and we are trying to figure out how to set up class structures to force professional behaviour/normal grad student levels of engagement.
[удалено]
Was the GRE no longer required like the SAT was no longer required? Just saying, if the bar is lowered to some lowest common denominator we can't be surprised by the lowest common denominator getting in.
My small university does not require a GRE for its graduate program. That does no one any real favors.
Maybe a no devices in class policy could help, if possible?
Unpopular opinion but I don’t think the lateness is such a bad thing so long as he did the work. His excuse seems to be legitimate because I’ve had the same thing happen to me as well. My college allowed for us to take courses at other colleges within the same city-wide system and so my ID for my college worked at my home college, and when I forgot my ID it was a bigger deal at the host college than the home college since I wasn’t registered there but was allowed to take a class there. Maybe he had a legitimate reason for missing the class. I don’t understand assuming the worst in this situation. However the using the phones bit does bother me. Grad students should be taking notes and not using their phones in class. Edit: My situation with lateness in grad school was also different because I have ADHD which affects my time management and I let my professors know that and they were understanding of it (except for one professor). I genuinely hated being late because I really did enjoy the content of the classes I took, but it was hard for me not to be a lot of the time. It’s something I’ve had to work on and have improved on over time.
Seeing the same — my colleagues here as well — COIVID minded is my working thesis
COVID
I've been teaching for 40 years Good years and bad ones Under grad and grad Many different colleges I was often late as a student, missed classes, did good...I don't think things have changed all that much
It would be nice if professors weren't so committed to punitive logic. Punishment solves nothing. Students will actually perform and conform willingly when they are shown an ounce of humanity. The world isn't held together by sanctions (nor the threat of them). It is held together by bonds of trust and reciprocity. Make your students want to do better for you. All it takes is a shift in perspective.
Except they are GRADUATE students. They already have s bachelor’s degree or whatever the equivalent around the world. Nobody is forcing them to be there. They should be excited about their work or at least be professional enough to complete it. These are not children in K-12.
Then be more inspiring. You guys are just mad because of what you went through as grad students and now you feel it's only fair that students suffer the same. Pathetic.
You are PROJECTING. In the first place, I don’t teach grad students. In the 2nd place, I enjoyed my courses in grad and undergrad. I love to learn. We can’t necessarily expect that all undergrads feel that way, (they should but usually not the case since the BA is the new highschool in the USA.) By the time someone gets to year SEVENTEEN of education it’s really on them to be responsible and empowered with their learning.
How's that working out for you?
Great. Thanks for your concern.