To wonder WTF has happened to students?!

[CharminglyOdd]

I'm 25 and finished my studies (for good!) just over a year ago so have bits and pieces of uni experience over the last seven years. DP does some teaching at a university where they have a sister college in another town. Students at the uni who want to take his module have to travel to the sister college, which is vocational (they can combine the two). Some asked for a meeting and so he arranged to meet them at X cafe at 1730. I've just had a text from him to say that they didn't know where X cafe was (it's in our, and their, home town where the main uni is that they travel from every week) so instead of Googling it or asking him they trekked out to the sister town and have spent the last half an hour wandering around trying to find it. They are on their way back now to meet him and he's going to be very late home (he teaches one class and doesn't have an office before anyone suggests that).

There are other things that have happened, including requests for more clarification on assignments (which I have done, he has done, nothing wrong with that) but when they are not satisfied with the answer they email again, and again, and it becomes apparent that what they are really after is the answer to the question. A large proportion submitted assignments that failed the plagiarism software even though they knew the software existed and it's not got a low bar for detection AND they have plagiarism talks rammed down their throats (I know because I did and I got heartily sick of it)

Any other examples are too specific but, in all honesty, I don't think this many students were like it when I started only a few years ago. I wouldn't have pulled half the stuff they pull - I had too much respect for (most of!) my lecturers.

It's not the majority of students but still a pretty depressing proportion. I don't know how on earth they think some of this stuff is reasonable behaviour. And I'm pissed off because I'm hungry, he was due home ten minutes ago and it's eating into our time together (I work away, got tomorrow off so home early!).

YY to the OP. we spend our lives chasing up non-attendees and non-subs, and yet they campaign for the SU arguing that they want more contact time to 'get their money's worth'. We always, always turn our marking around in the time we say, but they complain it's late when what they mean is that they want it immediately. One student complained that lecturers got longer to mark than he got to write the work: yes, that's because we're not just marking your essay, duh.

I don't actually think students are more irresponsible than they were 30 years ago.

I think the main difference are that they are more likely to blame the university when their normal teen irresponsibility has the inevitable results.

With the fees there is a tendency for students to see themselves as customers and forget that even the best customer service in the world cannot deliver something to a customer who is unavailable.

I sometimes feel like a chef in a posh restaurant who serves up a perfectly prepared and expensive meal; customer walks straight out of the restaurant the moment the waiter appears with his plate and then complains on TripAdvisor that the meal wasn't filling enough. Well, it would have been if you'd eaten it!

Having said that, most of my students, most of the time, are really lovely and don't deserve being slated. And some overcome incredible odds to make a success of their studies! Some of the stories I hear from my students are amazing: students who have been to absolute rock bottom and still keep fighting! Students who struggle with SN and mental health problems and still keep going! Students who so deserve to succeed and who are so grateful for anything you can do to help them. They are what makes my job worthwhile!

Students- I do actually quite like them.

If I had missed a seminar for no very good reason, I would have emailed my tutor to apologise, and if I hadn't done that, I'd have been hiding behind hedges if I saw the tutor coming.

What I wouldn't do is email them asking them to please forward me any work I missed, asked for reassurance that I hadn't missed anything important, demand a one-to-one tutorial at my convenience....

I have some very lovely and committed students, but some really lazy gits with poor manners as well, it must be said.

Good to see a balanced post there cory

I think students, like teenagers generally, often get a bad press when actually there are some cracking young people out there, working really hard and doing their best often under very difficult circumstances.

I have 3 at uni - they are all very different - the postgrad is often on another planet and I wonder how he makes it out of bed some mornings, the youngest dd has fought hell and high water to get to uni but wouldn't dream of sharing that fight with her lecturer.

Its a very different world isn't it - from the one where you had the lecture, got the assignment then dashed to the library to try to get the books out that you needed to read to do the assignment - and agreed with people when you'd bring them back (the next day) so that they could read them. No 'easy fix' by googling and seeing what comes up, no resources 'on-line'.

Actually I have to say I love my students. They come from a very rough catchment area (I'm not in the UK), and they realise that this is their chance to get out of it. I had a lad last year who worked as a nightwatchman in a hotel five nights a week, and still came into class every day. I have one this year who confessed he was missing some classes because he was working part-time on a building site. He was also living there, because otherwise he'd be homeless

There are still plenty of diligent, organised and hard working students; they are the ones who get on with their studies quietly, who only ask for help when they really need it and who do well. Unfortunately its the other kind which take up most of your time, time you would be better spending teaching or researching, rather than doing basic housekeeping type issues that should have been installed in the school/home of the student before they ever reached university. And I honestly think the latter kind is very damaging for the moral of the better kind, as we are encouraged to do everything to get them through, no matter how little work they do off their own motivation.

I cannot believe it sometimes when you get a student's parents phoning or emailing you and demanding to know why their perfect son/daughter has failed. I've had the "don't you know who I am/what I do" line several times from a parent.

My department has actually installed electronic attendance records, electronic submission of tutorial work and a weekly drop in session for the lost and worried, whose attendance is electronically noted. The system makes an electronic record of who has accessed the course notes made available online, therefore if a student has poor attendance and hasn't downloaded the notes for the missed lecture, I can safely say they haven't bothered to get the materials.

This has all been put in place to protect staff against spurious complaints. Therefore I can quite easily call up records on a failing student and point out the reason they have failed is not deficiency of teaching on the part of the university, but the fact that they have not accessed the course materials at all, their assingement reflected no knowledge whatsoever of the course, and that is is fairly obvious when a student has simply knocked off a poor attempt in an hour or two by googling random references!

I have just this minute text my daughter and asked her what is expected of her and what she is provided with. She is expected to take her own notes and they do not get copies of power points. Some lecturers will read a draft of their essays and some leave them to get on with it. In her own words she says 'you do the reading in the week then class is for discussing not learning'. She works bloody hard in order to keep up with the reading and get all her work in on time to a high standard. She is currently in the library - actually getting books off the shelf and reading them!! They can get papers on line which makes sense and cuts photo copy bills.

Does that not sound fair to you? What would you think she should be provided with?

I'd have thought discussion ought to be helping with learning.

Btw, not asking to be picky, asking so I can try to improve my teaching.

LRD - are you asking me if it sounds fair what i have said regarding my daughter? I absolutely think it is fair and exactly what i would expect from a third year student! I don't believe in spoon feeding and hand outs! I was really just questioning those who say students expect handouts and general mollycoddling but this doesn't fit with what my DD says happens. She LOVES her course and her classes and is more than happy to do the required reading.

I am a very old lady and did my degree in the mid-80s (when, remember, only 5% of people were undergraduates). I lived in Halls in the first term which were rooms with a couple of shared kitchens on each floor. One day a student set off the fire alarms by igniting every ring on the hob "because he was cold".

He was studying Engineering

I used to tut when I told this story; I now have pre-teen boys & can imagine them being exactly the same .

Generally agree with OP though.

I have a son similar to Emphatic?s (congratulations to both of you) but fully statemented for SEN, trying to beat the odds to study a rigorous degree despite currently having major organisation and on line memory difficulties, exhaustion and a very difficult collapsing home situation. He has some self-care difficulties that don?t fix if just left to get on with it, so would be living at home during his degree and travelling daily.

The plan (if he makes the grades required) is to take a gap year, continue to study more maths at A level (course is maths heavy) to keep practised, and another relevant subject, get a part time job so he has some money behind him (we are desperately broke and everything is broken and falling apart) and gains more independence, work on improving some of the self-care and organisational skills, and get the practicalities in his life fully sorted (such as a dry home, and his own room) so he enters uni ready to study, not in freefall chaos with everything falling apart, lurching from crisis to crisis as we have for the last three years. (Through putting supporting his learning above everything)

I thought it was a realistic sensible plan, but have been surprised that at offers days, he?s very much being encouraged not to do this, ignore the chaotic situation and just come, knowing he will be in trouble coping from day one if he does, but there seems to be an idea that the level of support he?ll be offered will overcome it all.

The course is over subscribed, so it isn't about next years numbers...

Ah, right, thanks little. I wondered if there was anything she was unhappy with/would expect to be different.

It's strange, but it's actually really hard to get feedback. Maybe it's easier if you're a grown-up academic (I wouldn't know), but I find they don't really want to fill in feedback sheets if there's something negative. So I get lots of positive from the ones who're happy, but then the ones who aren't end up complaining further down the line. So I just wondered really.

LRD I think the thing that frustrates my DD is the difference between lectures expectations even in the same department. For example she has recently submitted two essays. Lecturer one gave them all some clue as to the direction they could go, advised some reading and read their first drafts. The second didn't provide an essay title (they had to think of their own question which they then had to answer) and didn't give any sort of direction at all as to any of this - even when approached. She has managed both but was extra stressed by the second scenario. I don't think either is wrong but is think it can be confusing.

Charmingly odd the other point is I suspect that while my ds would never give your dp the same kind of problems his students are giving him, I very much doubt that people like him would ever have had what they can do, rather than what they can?t, recognised and let into uni, a few years ago.

Um ... the thread's moved on, but I was re-reading, and LaQ, I want to say this nicely because I know you're often self-mocking with your sense of humour but that comment about African literature did shock me, to be honest. I'm sure it's a joke but, well, could you not? It's just people make those sorts of jokes quite a lot and cumulatively it's horrible.

Sorry to be preachy and interrupt the thread. As you were.

I don't agree, I find most younger people scarily brilliant. You do get some who haven't a clue but it has always been the way.

By the way, one guest at our wedding turned up very late to the church because she'd got the name of the village confused with another one, 30 miles away, in a different county - it starts with the same letter and has the same number of syllables but that's where the similarity ends, and in any event there was a map, direction and a postcode in the invitation, which she no doubt lost - and she was in her 40s.

There's a difference between hating something and saying that objectively it therefore must be shit though, don't you think? I mean, I don't get on with maths, but I couldn't say it was rubbish, could I?

I'm not criticizing your taste at all. There's plenty of literature I can't stand. It was the phrasing that gave me pause. I wouldn't ever say that 'African literature' is a 'contradiction in terms' because it suggests that you think there's something inherent in Africa or African people that means they can't write 'literature'. I get that you were just using a bit of hyperbole to mean you really, really didn't like it, but as I say, it did quite seriously give me pause.

I can take or leave Jane Austen, TBH. I like Persuasion.

I was at university 20 years ago

At one point I had a 9am lecture on the other side of town! How the hell did they expect me to get there in time, eh? It was compulsory too, the unreasonable gits.

I do remember writing essays out longhand and then having to queue for a computer to type it up. Everyone has laptops these days.

I lived without a telephone for a year. I washed my clothes in the bath. In halls we had communal toilets/showers (but if you were desperate you could pee in your sink)

I've got two DC's at uni and I wouldn't know how to contact their lecturers and I can't think of a good reason for me to do so.
Mine seem more mature and sensible than I was, they survive on their loans (we pay their accommodation but no more) and have never been overdrawn. They are also rarely drunk which did surprise me.
They turn up for lectures and get assignments in on time. So far their results are good.