Reply to Tell High School Students to Stop Contacting Professors

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Reply to "Tell High School Students to Stop Contacting Professors"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm an academic at a research organization (not a university) and I totally agree with the OP. But I'd go a step further: I also get emails all the time from undergrad students whose professors require them to do some kind of interview or mock policy exercise involving outside experts. I understand the desire to help students get real-world experience, but I don't have endless extra time to help teach someone else's class. [/quote]

So it's either brown-nosing for college admissions (and the counselors paid $$ telling them to do this need to stop) or it's feckless HS teachers assigning students an "impossible task" and PARENTS need to tell them to stop. [/quote]

No. You have things backwards. The core issue is that educational institutional priorities are really screwed up. Advisory support and development of undergraduates is often haphazard and political at a lot of schools that excel at raising $, marketing themselves, building pretty buildings, and generating high-profile research. As PP profs have acknowledged, there is a real reluctance for professors to want to train younger students.

High schools are chronically mismanaged, with a lot of administrative bloat and underpaid teachers. There is no intrinsic incentive to develop students beyond what is in someone's "contract". Furthermore, there is often poor alignment academically with curricula and modern jobs.

Admissions is just an inefficient mess, with huge energy input and relatively low yields, even at top schools.

As a result, a huge industry of college consultants and pay-to-play college programs and research packaging shops has exploded. $$$ is driving all of it.

Parents can certainly opt out of the madness to a degree. But the problems are real and are not the parents' fault. The educational system is eroding. Instead of focusing on growing opportunities and mentorship for students, services and support are often getting cut. Students are effectively being abandoned by the adults.

And then we wonder why everyone is stressed out and parents feel pressure to pay for all this nonsense? Give me a break.  [/quote]

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