To ask if you work in a university have you noticed a recent change in student behaviour?

[0987ghj]

I graduated from university in 2019, and have now returned to study a different course. I've noticed a big difference in student behaviour and I wondered if it's something that university staff have also noticed or if it's just my course.

I'm hoping that this thread doesn't seem like I'm trying to slate current university students/gen Z. A few of the examples I've seen are from mature students, so I don't think it's generational/an age thing.

There's a lot of talking now during lectures, people just talking loudly whilst the lecturer is talking (not even whispering). It's pretty brazen and full on conversations, not just a quick question or comment, and really distracting. People are often late quite a lot, there's routinely a few students who are 40+ minutes late to a 2-hour lecture. I know there are some reasons people may be late such as childcare issues, or traffic or illnesses like IBS that make it hard to leave the house in the mornings so that might just be why, but it's a lot more lateness than I ever saw in my degree before. There would be the occasional person 5-10 minutes late, but not 40+ minutes.

People also start packing up and starting to leave before the lecturer has even finished talking. Our lectures always finish slightly early to allow time to walk to other lectures so there's not really any need for it. I don't remember this happening before, unless it was because the lecture had ran over and even then people would quietly/subtly pack up.

Nearly everyone worked, some long hours when I was at university 15 years ago. Even the maximum loans and grants for the lowest income households barely covered everything; it's only more known now as its affecting a bigger group of people. This doesn't cause people to talk in lectures though does it? There's a lack of respect and a lack of discipline filtering throughout society, including in universities.

Nail on the head.

I'd also add that the growth in Uni size and student numbers has removed any sign of "personal" attention/interaction with lecturers in some unis/some courses. Students watch TV programs/films, etc and see students having tutorials in lecturer's offices. For most students, that doesn't happen. They only "see" the lecturer in the lectures, often from a distance. Seminars and tutorials are taken by phd students. My son, who's just gradutaed with a first in Maths says he never spoke in person to a single lecturer in the entire 3 years of his course! He emailed a few times but never went to their offices - didn't even know where they were. The first year, his lecturers weren't even on campus "due to covid" of course!! He just got into the habit of "watching" them on a screen. Second year was a bit better but still most modules online. Still 2 modules online in year 3!

The sheer size of some unis make them intimidating, added to lack of consistent information/messaging - many uni websites are hard to navigate, as are their student portals and student info online hubs.

That "depersonalisation" by so much being online and the growth in student numbers is undoubtedly going to "change" how students interact with their lectures/lecturers.

Perhaps the lecturers who were so keen to work from home and reluctant to go back to face to face teaching should have been more careful what they wished for!

And yes, students ARE now customers now that they're paying £9250 p.a. tuition fees. They expect more than a couple of decades ago, when they got it free! That doesn't excuse poor behaviour but it's obvious they're going to have higher expectations and Unis need to realise the different dynamics now that they're a "paid for" service provider!

15 years in Student Support here.

The sense of entitlement started when the fees increased, and general cost of being a student went through the roof.

Suddenly, instead of working together, students became customers- disrespectful, arrogant, entitled customers.

Universities have also become businesses, Basically if you don't work in a department that generates or protects revenue, then you are under appreciated and under resourced.

It all adds up to a more miserable environment all round, and add in strikes due to poor pay and contract changes..Well I can't see it getting any better.

The most annoying increasing issue is parents calling in shouting the odds - you can't tell them anything anyway due to GDPR but the arrogance and disdane for university is awful.

I had a different experience doing my postgrad in 2021, everyone was super respectful of the lecturers, on time, generally well behaved. I have seen PPs mention the need to work whilst studying, we had to sign a contract to say we would not work over 12 hours a week otherwise we would jeopardise our place so that could explain it. Our cohort was also 80% international students so it may have also been a cultural thing.

DH is a university lecturer and he has noticed a massive decline in behaviour and a rise in entitledness. Students pay a lot for courses and are treated as ‘clients’ by the uni so they feel as if they are entitled to high marks even if they turn in poor work. If they don’t get the marks they want, they initiate a procedure that entails review of the mark by more than one member of academic staff. The lecturer who gave them the mark then has to spend time justifying the mark.

Also lectures are recorded and students can listen to them at any time online so barely any turn up in person to lectures. They don’t seem to care that this means they can’t engage with the lecturer.

Also there is a large proportion of students with mental health problems and special needs, which escalated massively during Covid. The lockdowns were the worst thing to happen to that generation for decades.

I don't understand why lecture halls don't have signs saying 'no eating'. Wouldn't' that help?

No, it doesn't. They say "oh yeah, but everyone ignores that!"

During Independent Study, I often find my students eating in the LAB.

Not really, I am a lecturer. Students are respectful and well behaved. We have relatively small student groups and I keep them very busy during lectures. I’m also very clear on expectations so they never really cause me problems current or past.

There's an element here that sounds like an extension of the behaviour problems in schools where no one imposes any real consequences any more

Make attendance required. Have it disclosed on transcripts that are provided to future employers.
Fail them if they don't attend. Take registers.
Don't give extensions without documented extenuating circumstances eg a bereavement or hospitalisation.
Make deductions to the grades of the students talking in lectures.
Only make recorded lectures avaliable in special circumstances.

Its a myth that these students are paying for their courses. Most won't pay back the debt. Its not right for the taxpayer to be funded them to fuck about for 3 years

It's been on a downward trend for years thanks to the rampant consumerism and over-expansion encouraged by senior leaders in the sector, but according to my many friends who still work in HE, the level of student engagement took a huge nosedive following the pandemic and has not recovered as of yet. I have given guest lectures at a few local unis over recent years and more than one contact has felt they had to cancel these due to needing the time to focus on core aspects of their courses due to poor student attendance.

Staff feel pretty disengaged too due to poor industrial relations particularly what they see as universities' management colluding with the pension provider to effectively lie to staff about their pensions so they could try to reduce terms.

HE not in a great place at the moment.

Having said all that I agree with the PP who said universities put a huge amount of their teaching online during Covid and were excessively reluctant to return to in person teaching. It was ridiculous and destructive to the university learning experience.

This thread has just reminded me of my own first year of undergrad lectures. 350 students in a room that held about 300. It was absolute carnage. When the lecturer walked in and turned their back to write on the board they would be greeted with a forest full of paper airplanes or scrunched up paper balls. The paper airplanes were lit as the year moved on so it didn’t get much better. Talking was done at full volume, people shouted across the room to their mates. This went on the entire year with the exception of two lecturers who were able to manage the group. That was in the 90s my Dad studied the same course in the 50s and he described more or less the same behaviour. It was funny as a student but I can’t imagine much fun as a lecturer.

I saw this behaviour too on my latest pass through university.

It’s unerringly from the type of students who have self-diagnosed themselves online. So you see, because they did a quiz last year which asked about personality traits the majority of people will have in some degree, they actually have autism/adhd/insert the current trend here.

So the poor little flowers can’t possibly be expected to be on time, or concentrate, or try to succeed at all.

Ironically the students who did need a little extra help, who had official NHS diagnosis of autism and ADHD, were the ones with impeccable manners, sitting quietly and listening to the lectures as best as they could (even though they were going to have to rewatch them at home to assimilate everything).

How would you know about the online habits of each and every student?

This x100

"The sense of entitlement started when the fees increased, and general cost of being a student went through the roof. Suddenly, instead of working together, students became customers- disrespectful, arrogant, entitled customers."

It's not a sense of entitlement though is it? If you're paying through the nose, you are entitled to get something good for your money. If I had been paying this much when I went to university I wouldn't have so easily accepted it when things were not right and teaching was not of good quality.

In London loans barely covered rent 15 years ago. My kids had to work through uni to cover bills, food & going out. They also worked in uni holidays. Didn't affect their studying or attendance & helped them get jobs after uni as they had experience & references.

I don’t work for a university but had to do a little presentation to a group of 30 students visiting my workplace. I was really distracted by constant talking amongst themselves, texting/scrolling through their phones and one of them had put their feet on another chair and was asleep. Also weirdly lots of them kept their coats on as if they were about to up and leave, it wasn’t cold at all. My part of the afternoon was only about half an hour across 3 of us and really interesting! They had a tour, saw some practices in action so hadn’t spent hours in the meeting room and they were all supposed to have a specific interest in my particular area. I don’t really like public speaking and asked not to do it again as I found it really depressing.

I have taught in a university for over 20 years. In our department we noticed a real drop in engagement with the cohort who started in October 2021. The group starting in 2022 have been more engaged and, so far, the group starting in 2023 seem fine.

There have always been lecturers who don't manage student chatter properly - I find that if I stop talking when students are chatting and ask them (very kindly) if there is a problem then this stops the chatter from them and prevents it from others. Some colleagues stop lecturing when there is student chatter and tell the students quite forcefully to "stop talking" - this also seems to be successful. As long as my students are not causing any disruption I don't object to scrolling on phones etc - after all they could be looking at the online course notes.

The odd student does email me in an abrupt style - I don't mind being addressed by my title and surname or by my first name, but I do expect some sort of email greeting. If I receive emails without greetings from a tutee more than once I do pick them up on this.

Really, most of our students are lovely and I generally find dealing with students to be one of the nicest and most rewarding parts of my job.

I can’t make comparisons but my DD started her degree in September and hasn’t mentioned any issues like this…and she would be the first one to complain if it was going on and affecting her studying!

I lurk on the WIWIKAU Facebook page, and there weems to be a lot more early drop outs and students failing years than ever this year, and it seems to me that young people are more ill prepared than ever for university and expect it to be more like school. On another thread a poster has summed up what university is very well - students are there to study, not to be taught, and this message seems to be lost to many students. And yet, more students than ever are graduating with firsts.

DD graduated last year so she went through all covid lockdowns as a student. Luckily the first 6 months and her last year were normal student experiences.

She preferred attending lectures to watching them online, but as she has CFS she had a habit of falling asleep during many lectures. However, she always caught up with them online afterwards.

i can understand if some students act fed up - mine is still waiting for her work to be marked from last year. More face to face would help create a professional working atmosphere all round too.

It's the best part of 30 years since I was at uni for my first degree, but I recall there being a lot of talking during lectures and I recognise the packing up early thing. No one more than 10 minutes late though and that was rare.

I wondered at the time if that was an ex-poly/"proper" university divide. Are you at the same uni now @0987ghj?

I’m a lecturer and the biggest thing we see is students who aren’t able to meet deadlines/manage time and workload. I think it’s because of exams being cancelled during Covid maybe, and they are struggling to find a rhythm with it all. We also have an absolutely massive - like unbelievably massive - increase in students with mental health problems, which I suppose goes alongside the Covid theory.

Yes, this. But also lateness or simply not showing up at all if they don't have to.

I can answer the coat issue....there are no cloakrooms anymore! When I was a student back in the last century, most department buildings had cloakrooms. You came in and hung your coat up and then headed to labs / lectures! I was a mature student a couple of years ago, and got sick of having to carry my coat everywhere. Either keep it on, which was easier than carrying it around, or go without and just hope weather doesn't change!

I attended university in 2011 and it was very different. We had separate lectures to seminars and noone would noone would talk over but we also wasn't sent information in advance. I'm now a student again in my 30s and it's very much flipped learning, we come (or in theory should) with the knowledge already then discuss throughout the lecture.
There is a lot of rude mature students who talk over but some of this also comes down to the lecturer. One lecturer will call it out instantly. Another is like a wet blanket but she's also said she's studying for her teaching qualification as part of it and you can tell she's not taught before.
We all eat in class, I don't consider that rude unless it makes lots of noise. People are hungry. It's better than tummy rumbling. Phones id say 50% put away. People do turn up late but again if they screw up its on them. What really aggravates me is those who smoke not returning within the 5 min break and us all having to wait to resume. We said yesterday to the lecturer they're the taking the p*ss now and non smokers are fed up of it.