So this thread has a lot of what my mom and her colleagues have been seeing over the past few years. But as my mom says, the solution here isn’t to keep dumbing everything down and keep destroying standards, if for no other reason, because it doesn’t work. Like this person said, it’s really not about accessibility. These students aren’t unable to do the work, they’re unwilling, and I think it’s due to what I’ve been saying for years: students have a “the customer is always right” mindset and sense of entitlement towards higher education. As someone who actually finished her degrees during the pandemic, I’m sick to death of people acting like all of this is because of trauma. Be so fucking real right now. Every generation goes through hardships. But we’re seeing an entitlement epidemic where students show up, demand college classes be as easy as possible, refuse to do anything remotely challenging, and demand to get good grades despite poor attendance, cheating with AI, and missing deadlines. I do not believe goalposts should be moved and standards should be lowered for people who refuse to even try, because that’s just rewarding bad behavior. When two students showed up to my mom’s office and said they need more time on quizzes because they don’t do the readings, her response wasn’t to give them more time, but “no, you need to do the readings.” I’ve said it a million times but keeping deadlines and actually showing up somewhere when you’re supposed to is one of the cores of functioning as an adult, that’s part of what college is supposed to prepare you for, and students shouldn’t be able to do no work and miss a good chunk of class and receive a good grade—like wtf are we doing here, then, if you don’t have to demonstrate you actually learned anything to get an A? But these students think they’re entitled to an A just by virtue of registering for the course
And again, making the assignments easier doesn’t reduce AI cheating because that’s not why the students are cheating. Contrary to what people on tumblr say, cheating students aren’t poor little meow-meows. They’re cheating because they’re lazy and entitled. I know from experience that this site screams and cries when you say that, because all of the discourse on here revolves around justifying people’s bad behavior and absolving them of any responsibility, but like I said before, students cheat with AI on ungraded drafts in my mom’s classes—drafts intended to be a low-stakes way for students to practice writing. Their AI usage has nothing to do with being fearful of bad grades, but instead a complete and utter unwillingness to do the work assigned to them in a class they signed up for. (I do think universities that encourage AI usage, as bsky OP mentioned, are absolutely a problem here though! Stop lowering standards ffs!)
If social media contributes to this problem, I think it’s because these entitled students have a bunch of enabling rhetoric online reassuring them that their bullshit is okay and they weaponize therapy speak they learned on tiktok to their professors who, god forbid, treat them like adults and try to hold them accountable. And I feel like that’s what’s missing in this thread, like, oh my god, these people are adults. These are not middle schoolers. Adults are responsible for their actions and should face consequences for them. Babying and coddling these adults and acting like it’s completely reasonable for them not to read a book in college is part of why they’re getting away with it! They don’t do the reading? Guess what: they fail. That’s how life works—or it should, as opposed to “oh darn I guess I can’t include any books in the syllabus for my reading/writing class anymore.” Like come on. I know this will set off this anti-intellectual website in particular but no one is a victim because they refuse to read a book! (And no, I’m not talking about people with disabilities who can’t read, so don’t even try.) Like, students refuse to read anything that isn’t tech-based? Then they fucking fail and waste their tuition money. Yes, this addictive tech is a huge problem, but it doesn’t resolve you of all responsibility. Put down the phone and fucking read.
Maybe these adults throwing temper tantrums over basic schoolwork need to face consequences, and maybe these adults are like this because they’re used to a lifetime of teachers bending over backwards to meet their demands after their mommies got on the phone and yelled at the teachers for giving them a bad grade; you don’t know how often my mom comes home from work and says “I can’t believe I’m the first person who ever told these students ‘no.’ Where do these childhoods come from???”
But students are not victims because they refuse to do any assignment that doesn’t personally entertain them, and it’s an incredibly childish mindset. As my mom tells students when they complain a text was boring: “I don’t care. I’m not here to entertain you.” Adult life is full of having to do shit you don’t want to!
And there’s this addition
Which, yes! Again, this is the core of the problem: they don’t care enough to look at assignment instructions. And I don’t think their laziness and apathy should be accommodated
tl;dr I think this thread brings up real problems, but universities coddling this bad behavior from entitled adults only makes the problem worse, adult students should face adults consequences, and standards exist for a fucking reason and shouldn’t be lowered for people who refuse to try. And btw, my mom still has plenty of hardworking students who do well in her classes with all the same access to social media, so, #notallstudents. It’s a choice, and professors are still willing to help the students who try (and to reiterate: this isn’t about students who truly need accommodations, this about neurotypical students who genuinely refuse to do anything)
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