Idiocracy

Former professor here!

Students these days are fucked. Professors are fucked too. Two points about AI and one about grade inflation. I'll keep this brief and give you three quick observations:

1. US, Canadian, and UK students are increasingly under pressure to pay more for everything. When you need to choose between working to pay rent and studying, you outsource to AI. Student athletes are, by far, the worst due to the exploitation opportunity athletics programs view them as. Practice more, study less, shop it to AI.
2. Student evaluations caused me more pain than anything else. I won a student curated Teacher of the Year award at my university. I'm good at teaching and love it. My student evals were from the ones that got bad grades. Those students spent more time challenging a C or below than actually studying. I know other professors grade inflate just to avoid bad evals and lost time. The eval system needs reform.
3. The rapidity in the decline in critical thinking, writing, and problem solving skills is shocking. One moment that sticks with me was when a student insisted Flint, MI didn't have a water problem but a political leadership problem. OK, fair, explain. They just stared at their laptop blankly. Started typing. Read a chatgpt response. That stuck with me. They probably heard a talking point or used AI for their question and had zero understanding of the situation at all. Its my job to inform them and educate, but it was the blind reliance on AI as their rationalization and knowledge tool that stuck.

Is breadth of learning always the goal though? Sounds like students are learning to work smarter, not harder.

Now, if they aren’t learning the core competencies in their field of study, that’s a problem. If they just aren’t learning how to write an essay or remember some shortcuts they’ll never need once they graduate, I fail to see a problem.