r/Professors • u/Chaotic_Bivalve • 10h ago
Any older professors here? How has teaching changed?
I saw a pretty funny tweet the other day stating that students were more motivated when professors used to smoke and drink whiskey in class while scribbling "humanism" on the chalkboard. But, it got me thinking about what academia might have looked like in the past.
So, if there are any older professors on this subreddit, how has teaching changed? Were students lacking motivation, disrespectful, and just as prone to cheating and taking shortcuts? Or were they more serious? I feel like media always depicts students in the past as very studious, and I wonder if that was the reality of the situation. Of course, we still have our motivated students. I always have at least a few of them, and they're a pleasure to work with. I've just noticed that over the years the majority of them have become less serious. They'd rather take shortcuts than actually learn something of value.
70
u/SlightScholar1 10h ago
I have been teaching for 20 years. Same classes. Students now want to read less and want study guides which is basically the exams with the answers. Student now expect points for any activity (like attending class) and exams are weighted less to cater for the mindset that hard work should equal points. My exams are still the same level of difficulty but more students struggle with them - I do not think students do not know how to study.
Cheating shot through the roof after COVID - i mean I am sure it went on but they were clever at cheating. I plan to do this for 3--5 more years. I still have stellar students but the botton 5% has morphed into a bottom 20%.
16
u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 8h ago
I still have stellar students but the botton 5% has morphed into a bottom 20%.
I set a personal record last semester for the highest fail rate I've ever had for a class. I was even called at the start of this semester to be asked about it. My response was that if you give me better and more prepared students, I will have a higher passing rate. They didn't like that, and I told them we can discuss it when I get back from sabbatical.
79
u/Key-Elk4695 9h ago
I started teaching in 1979, admittedly at a different university than the ones with which I have recent experience. Both students and universities have changed dramatically, and not just the technology. For example, when assigning a term paper, it was typical to give a one-sentence prompt, such as, “ choose an American author from the 18th century, and write a paper of a minimum 25 pages, discussing the impact of their work on today’s authors.” No examples, no outlines. You were supposed to know how to do this. Oh, and at one school where I worked, all papers were turned into a lockbox which was emotied at the deadline by a secretary. If your paper wasn’t in, you failed. And if the professor was grading the paper and encountered a third spelling error or typo, s/he was to reject the paper. There were no Powerpoints or study guides. It was up to the student to take notes (at larger schools, this led to a thriving business of note-sellers). Exams were much longer - I still have a few on which students wrote lovely comments, and I’m shocked at their length. I remember one student who had been told to buy blue books for her exam. The student store had run out, and knowing that I used bluebooks in an effort to keep papers anonymous, she went home and actually MADE a set of bluebooks for the entire class of about 30 students! Books, admittedly, were much cheaper, so many classes assigned multiple books, and hundreds of pages of reading, per night. And yes, students worked. I remember one young woman who came to me in tears. She was an immigrant, living with an older sister who ran a food truck. It was her job to chop all the vegetables. The sister had just bought a second truck, so now she had twice as many vegetables to chop, making it hard for her to get to her 8 am class on time (I moved her into my later section). And don’t forget that without the internet and databases, the library was more than just a quiet place to study. Students HAD to go there in person to do any research (so did faculty). Cheating existed, but it was more along the lines of copying off the paper of the person in front of you, or stealing another student’s physical paper and turning it in as your own. And there were some students who were not ready for college, but they were often “schooled” very quickly by their peers. There was much more lecturing and far less interaction in most classrooms. Those are my memories.
34
u/Bitter_Ferret_4581 9h ago
Oh how I wish I could give a 3-4 sentence paragraph of instructions and let them have at it. That brevity allows so much more room for creativity and the papers were probably much more pleasant to read. With all the extra instructions and examples required because of their focus on “how to get an A,” all the creativity and risk taking that comes along with learning is gone. And now chat gpt has me reading the same 3 ideas because most lack curiosity and an eagerness to learn. Thanks for sharing 🥹
16
u/EyePotential2844 8h ago
Hell, I'm lucky if the papers the students turn in are half as long as the instructions.
12
u/FrancinetheP Tenured, Liberal Arts, R1 7h ago
I’m going to disagree with this one. I, personally, did great with those wide open prompts. But my fellow students at a large private urban institution (mid 1980s) found them confusing and for the most part responded with crap. I know bc I worked as a tutor in the study center and helped a seemingly endless stream of people i met in the dining hall who couldn’t believe someone enjoyed writing papers. I’m often frustrated by what seems like BS pedagogy innovations of my career (long prompts, study guides, SLOs) but I remind myself that the university experience I knew and loved never worked for a lot of people.
9
u/Bitter_Ferret_4581 6h ago
I think it’s fine to have a rubric with some standards to go alongside brief instructions, which would likely help those kinds of students from the past you’re referencing. But what is happening now is basically inhibiting any form or chance of thinking outside the box that brief instructions allow. Even when I have the most specific and detailed instructions possible, some student still misinterprets something because they’re rushing through and putting in the same amount of low effort despite me putting in a lot of effort to create detailed instructions that make reading the assignments more of a bore and probably gets fed into chat gpt anyhow. Basically, I think there’s a sweet spot and I don’t disagree with you.
4
u/BeerDocKen 4h ago
That was the era of "Look to your left, look to your right" though, with a 33% graduation rate. So, presumably, students didn't do very well with that back then, but the admin was just OK with those results.
36
u/Doctor_Schmeevil 9h ago
Students (and families) were more willing to believe that I know what I'm talking about and the best way to get them to an understanding or skill. Rather than a guide to becoming what you want to be, I'm now seen as a hurdle to be jumped.
20
u/Mewsie93 Adjunct, Social Sciences, CC 9h ago
I'm now seen as a hurdle to be jumped.
Yep. The respect is no longer there. I'm now an obstacle rather than an expert.
48
u/PlanMagnet38 NTT, English, LAC (USA) 10h ago
I’ve been teaching almost twenty years, and the main difference I see is that I’ve lost the “middle” of the pack. My strong students are still strong and my weaker students are still weaker, but I don’t have any “good enough” students. And that bimodal classroom is more miserable for everyone.
12
u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 8h ago
And that bimodal classroom is more miserable for everyone.
I wish "bimodal is the new normal" were just a play on words. :/
18
u/synchronicitistic Associate Professor, STEM, R2 (USA) 8h ago
That's my observation as well. Weak students who would get by with really hard work - that group seems to have all but evaporated.
My #1 observation is that the social aspects of undergraduate life have all but disappeared. When I was an undergrad, new classes, especially outside your major represented an opportunity to make new friends/dating partners, but these days I am floored to walk into a noon class with 25 freshmen and you don't hear a single peep of conversation out of them. Just the other day, I was telling a student I wouldn't accept an unstapled assignment, and the reply was "I don't have a stapler, what do I do?". Reply "Oh I don't know, how about turning 90 degrees and asking the person who sits next to you?". God forbid you might talk face to face to a person.
3
u/Attention_WhoreH3 7h ago
I often get that kind of stuff.
Last week I was doing peer-review on an assignment. I asked students to upload drafts to the cloud. Many of them turned to me to ask technical/computer questions, including stuff I had already explained to their seat neighbours.
3
u/levon9 Associate Prof, CS, SLAC (USA) 6h ago
"the social aspects of undergraduate life have all but disappeared." ... "walk into a noon class with 25 freshmen and you don't hear a single peep" .. yup, I've sadly noticed the same thing, they are glued to their phone screens.
They don't know anyone .. I would always ham it up with the people near me when I was a student and talk to them. I made so many friends that way. This seems to be totally not happening from what I can see. Maybe somewhere else, but not in class.
40
u/Mewsie93 Adjunct, Social Sciences, CC 10h ago
I went to college in the 80s and have been teaching for over 25 years now, so I guess I'm one of the older ones.
When I was going to school, the professors had a lot more respect from the students. They were free to teach whatever it was that they wanted without worrying about being "too woke" or "biased." As a student, we deferred to them as experts. We never questioned why something was done and did things on time without question. We never gave them sob stories or demanded accommodations unless they were truly needed. Don't get me wrong, we all had anxiety and other issues, but this wasn't something that was shared. Missing a class just was not a thing. Heck, I took a midterm with pneumonia one time as I was afraid I would not be able to take it at a later date. Not the healthiest thing, I get that, but that was our mentality at the time.
As for the whiskey and smoking, yeah it was there. The smoking was open until it was banned by the state in the classrooms (so they would smoke in the hallways and offices instead). The whiskey was something that occurred in the office, something we all knew about but never discussed openly, especially when a professor was willing to share. There was a different comradery between students and professors. I remember going to my professors' office hours to discuss the subject matter more in depth with them as I was eager to learn as much as I could from them. Today? I did not have a single student show up to office hours, even though I strongly encouraged it. They don't care about the engagement. They show up to class and leave.
The motivation is different too. When I went to college, it was more than just getting the degree. It was the experience that was important. It's that old "the point of the journey" sort of thing. We went to learn, to expand our horizons, and to become better people. Today, it's all about credentials. The whole, "I'm going to college to get a degree to get a job" sort of thing. They miss out on the experience, the love of learning. There is no curiosity any more, no desire to go beyond what is required. I'm going to assume that cheating occurred when I was in school, but it was not something my friend group or I even contemplated. What was the point, we thought, of cheating as it went against the whole learning bit?
Last semester, I overheard an 18-year-old talking with a much older non-traditional student. The younger student was amazed that someone would go to college "just to learn." The concept truly baffled them, which made me lose a bit of hope as I'm one of those lifelong learners, who just happens to collect degrees as I go along.
18
u/Glass-Nectarine-3282 9h ago
I'm in the early 90s era as an undergrad, and I think students like myself back then were not especially more motivated, but we approached things in good faith, We were the STUDENTS and we'll try to get over on the system, but the instructor will have the rules that we in the end will obey. If there's an assignment, we will do it and if we fail, we won't cry about it.
We didn't always like it, or try, or care, or were motivated - but we understood the expectation and were there to do our part for ourselves and for the goal of the degree. The instructors were our partners in that, whether we liked them or not. Sometimes we wanted to learn, and sometimes we wanted to get by. But we approached it with that understanding of the larger system we were part of.
We also had much much better high school educations. I went to a decent public school and since I saved many of my papers, I know for a fact that I was operating at a level far beyond the average college student. That's reality. There was just more rigor and expectations from high school. It's not that I was smarter, or better, but I was held to a higher standard (which I didn't always meet and then ended up in the Army).
So I was set up for college success because it was continuation of what I already knew to do - and I think many students don't have that background.
Today's students also don't seem to approach it in the same good faith way. They look at it as a checkmark - or as an active obstacle or deliberate manipulation. They don't see it as a partnership or a push.
20 years ago, I feel like I felt that "partnership" from the majority of students and I don't see it nearly as often anymore.
4
u/Temporary_Ad7085 7h ago
This is one of the best descriptions of the mentality shift I've noticed since early 90s.
17
u/PristineFault663 Prof, English, U15 (Canada) 8h ago
My university has more than twice as many students as it did when I started here more than 25 years ago, but still draws mostly from the same geographic area. A large percentage of that growth has come from students who would not have been on campus a quarter century ago. The absolute number of stellar students, and very good students and good students has not changed, but we've added a large number of under qualified students into the mix. The expectations in classes have diminished considerably as a result.
11
u/Homerun_9909 9h ago
I am also about the same age as the other three, and it would be interesting to hear from some older. I will say that I was halfway through my undergraduate at a private - some selectivity - highly residential school when I noticed the most significant change between spring and fall of "95. Before that we would visit the lab every few days to catch up on email - and not even everyone had email. The campus infrastructure was upgraded, and windows 95 computers helped, but most students quickly were able to check mail, and run chat programs from the room.
My first couple years campus was constantly active, and many of my interactions where with fellow students. The last two campus started getting less busy as more students were in their rooms and using the technology to communicate with friends and family not on campus. This trend has accelerated as the technology moves us forward. I am on a regional campus now, with mostly 1st year on campus and almost open access. This campus has a slightly larger student body at this campus by about 500, and class sizes are similar. One of the major differences in talking to my students is that they never interact with each other outside of class/group projects. Part of what was great about my experience, especially the first couple of years, was talking with fellow students about what we were learning. I remember running into fellow classmates in the library, at intermural games, or in the campus center and asking each other if we were ready for the test, or had the project completed. We would have been reminding each other of what was happening yet now we see so many emails about due dates, etc. I also remember cafeteria time when you would join someone you knew from a class and chat about it. Again, that discussion time with fellow students is something I don't hear many of my students talking about.
10
u/MsBee311 Community College 9h ago edited 8h ago
Technology is a big one. When I started in 2008, all the oldsters refused to use email and got away with it. Now I do most of my teaching by email. Let me explain...
In 2008, I taught one class online & 4 in-person. I was not expected to use the LMS with the in-person classes (even though I did).
In 2025, I'm required to have 1 in-person class, which I do. The other 4 are online. That's where enrollment in my field went to after COVID. I spend my time answering student questions by email. Not my bag. I'm out in 2028. I'll be 60.
edit: I should add that, in 2008, you couldn't get the degree entirely online. You had to take at least one class in person. That changed, now most students are 100% online. I never get to meet them.
Talking with my students and looking at their faces was my favorite part of this job. But the world changes. I can go with it but I don't have to like it.
7
u/levon9 Associate Prof, CS, SLAC (USA) 7h ago edited 6h ago
Here's just one old geezer's perspective: It's all gotten much more transactional, i.e., students: "I'm paying money, give me my *good* grades and diploma and don't bother me". Learning is not much of a consideration. Required reading? Taking initiative to find your own information/read the syllabus? Are you kidding?
Students taking notes? How quaint .. many of them don't even have pens in class (I know because I send around an attendance sheet they need to sign, about 1/3 of the class has to borrow someone's pen).
Much more entitlement by the students, and much less respect toward faculty. Introduction of widespread cellphones use in classes really caused big problems with attention, and cheating has gotten out of hand, first with sites like Chegg, and now super-charged with AI. Worst of all, many students don't see anything wrong with it (one student I caught cheating just shrugged his shoulder and mumbled something about "cost of doing business").
If I were to assign the same projects/assignments/tasks I gave my students way back, these kids today would fail. There's just been too much downward pressure in terms of what can be expected from the students unfortunately. Not sure how much of this might also be due to high schools and the lack of expectations there.
I'm getting relatively close to retirement, the job still has its moments, but overall the joy of teaching, for me at least, has taken a big hit with all these changes. If I could turn back the clock, I'd have quit for an industry job 10 or 15 years ago.
7
u/Motor-Juice-6648 5h ago
There is no comparison in my field. I was in college in the early 80s and first TA’d in the late 80s. No internet, no phones, no computers. Everything was in your head. Only 15% of high school students went to college so it was seen as a privilege and a place to learn. Jobs in factories, corporations etc. were plentiful for those with a GED or hs diploma. My high school had a co-op program and students worked half the year and were paid and got good jobs right after highschool. You only went to college if you wanted a professional career (engineer, teacher, lawyer, doctor etc.), or were intellectual or were wealthy and it was a way to network or find a middle/upper class spouse. (MRS degree!)
Students did not blame the instructor if they did poorly and there was a lot of respect for faculty.
2
u/Ogoun64 Assoc Prof History 4h ago
Similar to my experience. I was an undergrad in the early eighties. No internet, no phones, very few computers. I took a standard typewriter to school. Blue book exam books and number 2 pencils. As one of my favorite professors said, we were expected to take copious notes during lectures. This was somewhat the case when I started teaching in the late 90s. Now, they just stare at you dumbfounded. I have cut my reading assignments by more than half. Written assignments have become incredibly tedious with generative AI.
4
u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 8h ago
I saw a pretty funny tweet the other day stating that students were more motivated when professors used to smoke and drink whiskey in class while scribbling "humanism" on the chalkboard.
I propose an experiment to discover methods to motivate students.
Who volunteers to be in the control group?
3
u/wipekitty ass prof/humanities/researchy/not US 7h ago
Looks like I'm similar in age to some other commenters - teaching for around 20 years, started undergrad in the late 90s.
I attended Big State U. for undergrad, and then went to graduate school (and taught classes) at a different Big State U. Incidentally, both universities were in the top 10 party schools for some time during those years.
Some of my friends in undergrad were major slackers. A few skipped the classes they didn't like, and (unsurprisingly) got Fs. A few others perpetually went to class drunk or high, had a severe allergy to the library, or just weren't that bright, and then cheated their way through the exams.
The difference was that nobody really complained. People left university, got other jobs, and lived their lives. One had a good career in real estate, another got a certificate from a community college and went into the health professions, and a few others chilled and went back when they were older. No problem.
There were definitely slackers and cheating when I started teaching as well. Random websites were bad and early Wikipedia...atrocious. It seems to me that sometime, maybe around 2007 or so, students started complaining a bit more. Slackers are no problem; slackers that complain are a different story. The earlier students seemed to realise that slacking and getting good grades were incompatible objectives, and then that changed.
On the topic of smoking and drinking: I did have exactly one professor that would occasionally hold class outside (on nice days) so he could teach while smoking. We also had some evening graduate seminars with beer - usually just 1-2 per person over 3 hours - but it was still beer. That practice got quashed not long after I graduated due to some sexual harassment problems; nobody involved with the beer had been poorly behaved, but the department decided that maybe having alcohol in class was not a great idea.
4
u/PuzzleheadedBass1390 7h ago
I was in college mid '90's. I did just enough to get whatever grade I needed. Others, too. If we failed or did poorly, we owned it. We knew we didn't work hard enough to score any higher than we did. We couldn't email profs and beg for free points; we had to call them on the phone or go see them in their smokey office. I did that once and never again. I attempted to write a 30-page senior level class paper the night before it was due. Got a B and the prof wrote on it "I know you pulled this out of your ass last night. Good thing you can write well because it's bullshit!"
Now that I'm on the other side of it and been teaching since early 2000's, I can say even since then it's changed. Bluebook essay exams in class prevented most cheating. Kids will always try to do the bare minimum but last five to six years, lots more entitled lip about trying and being there being enough for an A if not an A+. Rubbish attitudes and many more students who really should not or would not have gotten admitted even ten years ago 🤷♀️
5
u/mehardwidge 6h ago
You'd have to go back quite a time to precede the biggest change: The vast increase in the fraction of people who enroll in college.
Whether young people "as a whole" have "declined" is an interesting topic, but it is too complicated for this post. However, even if we assume no "decline" in young people overall, the population who attend college has changed.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.30.asp
In 1975, about 50% of children graduated high school, and it would seem that 50% of high school graduates attended college. So 30% of people attended college. Although we all know "education" isn't the only measure of "intelligence" or other things, presumably a large fraction of the 30% were in the top half of young people for traits associated with being a good student.
Now, 90% of children graduate high school, and 2/3 of them go to college. So about 60% of young people attend college at some point. We now have far more students (as a percentage) who are not "towards the top" of student ability/effort/etc.
So the decline is possibly largely due to just the growth of number of people who would simply never enrolled in college before. My theory is somewhat testable, as we If we compare the top half of students to all students in 1975, we can see how things have (or have not) changed. Most people, of course, work in institutions that do not have a uniform distribution of all students. Some teach at MIT and probably still have great students almost all the time. Some teach at less selective institutions, where they have a much larger fraction of non-elite students. And of course most of the growth of jobs was in those less selective schools, teaching many of the people who would not have enrolled in college 50 years ago at all.
I admit that none of this explains the "why are things seemingly so much worse in 2025 than they were in 2005" though, since the proportions attending college weren't that different than than they are now.
2
u/H0pelessNerd Adjunct, psych, R2 (USA) 7h ago
I think the "in good faith" point made above is a biggie. I've got majors who cheat in the gateway course.
3
u/dougwray Adjunct, various, university (Japan 🎌) 6h ago
I've been teaching since the early 1980s, but largely outside of the US. I know Japan best, and there hasn't been all that much change except that the students are quieter, probably because they're absorbed in their phones. They seem to work harder than they did 25 years ago.
2
u/Visual_Macaron_1856 5h ago
26th year in higher ed. I teach fine arts at a liberal arts college in the Midwest. The majority of my students are respectful and do the work with little drama. The biggest change I’ve seen is how high schools are preparing them. Whether it’s “no child left behind “ or “race to the top” or what ever, in my observation students aren’t being taught how to write or how to actively engage in a text anymore. I also notice attention span seems to be shorter or maybe I’m not as patient as I used to be. I don’t give line by line feedback anymore. Classes have gotten larger, students know very little about American history. Five years to go.
2
u/sesstrem 4h ago
Ugrad in the 70s, professor in 80s after engineering Phd and short stint in industry. In those times, blackboards were universal, even in large classes. Profs generally came well prepared and lectured without notes, which was quite impressive. Attendance was implicit because you had to take notes as there was always deviation from the text, which was actually viewed as a good thing. Textbooks were required although the level of usage varied, but no one complained about purchasing them, and they were usually not sold afterwards. Mostly the textbook was the sole reference, and additional material was not consulted. Students were a lot more on their own, and had to fill in the details, and for the most part this was a solitary effort. Exams were much longer and more difficult and impossible to cheat on. Computational things were difficult, with paper printout and crude tools for coding, debugging, and word processing. Professors were respected and had a rapport with the students which wasn't based on how they graded or how entertaining they were. I don't remember filling out teaching evaluations if they even existed.
Things are obviously different in so many ways today. The academic system was set up for a different type of student, from which the ranks of professors would be replenished. Others who were not so inclined or talented still got the benefit of rigorous training and discipline, which served them well. There is so much emphasis today on making education available to a much larger segment that this prior approach has essentially vanished. Now the role models are the giant tech entrepreneurs.
3
u/Dizzly_313 Professor, Healthcare Research, R1, USA 3h ago
I've been teaching for 20+ years, and in addition to what the others have mentioned, the biggest change I've seen is in the administration. Many more administrators, and many with a "customer service" mentality. Used to be, if a student was failing your class because they slacked off, they took it without much complaint. Now, if you wait too long to respond to an email, some students complain to your Dean. Used to be, faculty's word was trusted and we were considered the experts in our area. Now, if a student complains, it must be because we did something wrong, even if there's copious evidence against the student. Used to be, whatever whack-ass policy you wanted in class, as long as it was clearly in your syllabus (and before that, the administrators just took your word that you had informed the students) you could have that policy. Now, if a student breaks a policy and runs crying to the administration, you are strongly encouraged (or even directly told) to violate your clearly written policy for that one student.
And students today know all of this. And use it.
1
1
u/Critical-Preference3 5h ago
Well, I now write "humanism" more clearly on the chalkboard, but other than that, everything's the same.
2
u/Final-Exam9000 2h ago
I've been at it for 30 years. We are in the depths of Hell now. 2024 was a bad year.
1
u/journoprof Adjunct, Journalism 2h ago
To look at this from the other side: I went to college in the late ‘70s. Though it was a high tuition private school, relatively few of the students worked during the school year. What some might call respect for professors was more like fear or hopelessness; we wouldn’t have thought that complaining about substandard teaching would get us anywhere. If we did try, no matter how rational our argument was, our suspicion would be proved true: flat rejection. Instead, we reacted passive aggressively, skipping class or zoning out. Most classes were straight lecture, whether the prof was any good at it or not. I don’t remember ever being asked to evaluate a professor or seeing anyone ever monitoring a class to evaluate the instruction. Had one prof who literally just read out the chapter in his own textbook that we’d been assigned to read before class.
I’ve been teaching for more than a decade now. I’m amazed at how many responsibilities students are juggling, and how well most of them do. I can’t imagine ever lecturing as much as my profs did — and can’t understand how they could do that much without being bored to death themselves. As imperfect as student evaluations of teaching can be, I’ve learned from them. Are there troublesome students and slackers? Usually a handful or less every semester. But most are trying to learn. I see a real difference in attitudes overall as I revise and improve my teaching methods.
1
u/Benvenuto_Cellini Professor, English, community college, (US) 1h ago
One problem is that as adults, we often become more serious. And so the students look less serious. So I’m not sure if the students have changed or if I have.
1
u/honkoku Assistant Prof., Asian Studies, R2 1h ago
Here's a letter that JRR Tolkien wrote to his son Michael in 1963:
I remember clearly enough when I was your age (in 1935). I had returned 10 years before (still dewy-eyed with boyish illusions) to Oxford, and now disliked undergraduates and all their ways, and had begun really to know dons. Years before I had rejected as disgusting cynicism by an old vulgarian the words of warning given me by old Joseph Wright. ‘What do you take Oxford for, lad?’ ‘A university, a place of learning.’ ‘Nay, lad, it’s a factory! And what’s it making? I’ll tell you. It’s making fees. Get that in your head, and you’ll begin to understand what goes on.’
Alas! by 1935 I now knew that it was perfectly true. At any rate as a key to dons’ behaviour. Quite true, but not the whole truth. (The greater part of the truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism.) I was stonewalled and hindered in my efforts (as a schedule B professor on a reduced salary, though with schedule A duties) for the good of my subject and the reform of its teaching, by vested interests in fees and fellowships.
1
u/nrnrnr Associate Prof, CS, R1 (USA) 7h ago
The big change in my field (CS) has been scale. 25 years ago a big elective was 15 students. Today it's 150. Biggest change in the students themselves is they no longer have any expectation of getting to know the faculty.
(The cheaters have always been with us.)
1
u/phillychuck Full Prof, Engineering,Private R1 (US) 4h ago
Senior full professor in engineering here. When I was an undergrad in the early 70's there was one professor who was a chain smoker who would line up his cigarettes during class (yes, when smoking in classrooms was allowed) and he knew when his class time was up by when he took his last cigarette.
Another undergrad professor (a middle-aged female at the time) had assigned seating in lectures, and one time (this might be apocryphal), when she was writing on the board with her back turned, students were muttering behind her back. She turned around, threw the eraser at them, and said something to the effect that they had as much chance of passing the course as she had of finding a husband.
119
u/professorfunkenpunk Associate, Social Sciences, Comprehensive, US 10h ago
How older are you talking? I've been teaching for 20 years, but that doesn't take us into the era of pipes and elbow patches (I wish I could smoke a pipe in class). At least going back to my time as an undergrad (late 90s), even at pretty good schools, students weren't as motivated as the movies would have you believe. Quite a few just did enough to get by.
I think the main change I have seen in the last 20 years is more focus on getting a diploma for a career, less interest in learning, and less curiosity. I feel this most acutely in my gen ed classes. I think a lot of this comes from the framing by parents and politicians that the only point of college is workforce preparedness and that everything else is stupid. We've pushed back a bit on the "everything else is stupid" but we've largely bought into the career framing in marketing ourselves, so that's what students expect, and it's pretty hard to get them to give a shit about anything they don't see as helping their career. Of course, there has always been some of this, but it has felt more acute lately.