Lazy American college students aren't interested in learning

A very interesting op-ed piece in the Boston Globe this week shows exactly what happens in party school college classrooms. Students are texting away under the desk, making excuses about why their work is never completed and sleeping through their classes. I have been there, folks and this is all true!

What makes Kara Miller's experience at Babson College different, however, is that she also has a number of students from other countries to compare with her U.S. slackers. Unlike most of her American students, these students from other countries actually pay attention in class. Imagine that! They work hard on their assignments. They show up on time for faculty office hours. In short, they CARE about learning. It's like turning back the clock a few decades.

While she blames her slacker students on modern American culture's fascination with time wasters like video games, I think the real reason is American public schools' wholehearted adoption of what's called the Self Esteem Movement. Elementary and secondary teachers, in fear of damaging students' self esteem, give every student high grades, praise everyone's work equally and give gold stars to every student in the room. A cartoon a few years back caught the problem with this exactly. It was an entire room of students all wearing T-shirts that said "I'm the best student in the class."

When you reward students who work hard with the same grades and the same praise as students who do nothing it encourages students to do as little work as possible. Add to this the high school culture that glorifies stupidity and treats smart and talented kids as outcasts and you get exactly what Miller's article describes: anti-intellectual students who sign up for a five-year cruise on the SS Party School barge.

It's a serious problem at hundreds of party schools across the country and it will only change when brave teachers like Miller blow the whistle and force American parents to see how little education they are getting for their inflated tuition money.

Comments

[Babson Alum]

While I'll agree on some of your statements regarding students not caring enough about their education, I'd also like to one more: "Journalists" who make claims without doing any research of their own.

Please defend your statement in calling Babson College a party school. I patiently await my turn to rebut your baseless claims.

[Craig Brandon]

Dear Babson Alum,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. While you are correct that I have not done any research at or about Babson, the classroom conditions described by the professor match so perfectly the kinds of colleges that I am writing about that I feel certain that they match the profile. I have been researching this problem for over five years now, but I really can't put all my research on every blog post.

The phenomenon of students attending colleges without the desire to learn anything is well documented. The National Survey of Student Engagement, which has interviewed tens of thousands of students nationwide, has found that 45 percent of college students are "totally disengaged from the education process." These are anti-intellectual students who want to purchase a diploma but have no interest in learning anything. In previous generations these students would have flunked out, but today colleges refuse to do this because they provide the tuition money the college needs to operate.

The same NSSE surveys found that only 10 percent of students were "totally engaged" in college. These numbers are not generally known because most colleges don't make their NSSE numbers available. You can read about this phenomenon in the book "Ivory Tower Blues" by Cote and Alahar.

So what do all of these disengaged college students do in college? They party a lot. This results in the problem of students falling asleep in class, texting under the desk, not completing assignments, not showing up for office hours -- exactly the conditions described in the article.

I realize that the idea that colleges have stopped educating students is difficult to accept at first -- it certainly was for me when I first looked into this problem. I would suggest that you take a look at the 2005 PBS special "Declining by Degrees," which explains it very well in just two hours.

My book lists over 400 party schools in America where these conditions prevail. Babson is not on the list, but if the professor is to be believed it probably should be. It is still possible to get a good education at a party school, but the odds are against it. Smart, engaged students who want to learn are harassed constantly and are afraid to ask questions in class. There are also colleges in America where the engaged students don't fall asleep in class and actually complete their assignments on time.

My book, written for parents, attempts to help them tell the difference. Party schools deliberately recruit party students by using tuition money to build elaborate student centers, condominium dormitories and food courts and send out view books where there is no mention of classes or teaching. They know students aren't interested in that, so they focus on all the fun things there are to do there. In the cutthroat competition to lure students they are all competing to add the frills that party school students are looking for.

I receive many comments from alumni of party schools complaining that I have mistakenly classified them. The best way to deal with this is to talk with professors, who, if they are honest, will describe the pressures on them to dumb down classes, inflate grades and reduce the number of failing students in the name of "retention." You could also ask to look at the NSSE numbers for your school. Believe me, all the evidence is there.

[HLMencken]

There was a review of this book in today's Wall Street Journal that said that the list was not included in the appendix of the final version.

[College Research Papers]

I agree with your statement some of the students are not enough caring about education and the students attending colleges without the desire to learn anything.I want to thank you for providing this useful information about web services!

[Custom Essay]

Hi,
Its interesting post for me because I always says to my friend that he is a lazy student I will sand this page link to him.

[chanel j12 watch replica]

Both schoolmates and teachers should respect and learn from each other.

[UGGS Sale]

This is a good especially exceptional order you?¡¥ve sent in.Thanks with the a good extremely incredible place