Reply to If it’s harder then ever to get into top colleges, why do professors complain students now are bad?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]prof here--because there is a mismatch between the skills, habits, and intellectual virtues that professors want in their students and the kinds of skills and accomplishments rewarded in many K-12s. [/quote]

I agree with this but would also add that the process by which students acclimate to the rigors of college have also broken down somewhat.  There has been a trend over the last few decades-- in most respects, a very good trend-- to evaluate professors more on "teaching quality" than in the past.  The unfortunate part of this is that the most easily measurable aspect of teaching quality is student evaluations.  There are other ways that teaching quality could be measured but they are difficult and time consuming and so most universities place too much emphasis on student feedback.  When you apply this to freshman-level courses (often taught by either untenured or non tenure track faculty), there is a clear incentive to pander to students.  So when students come in to their first year of college with expectations that college coursework and expectations resemble high school coursework and expectations, there is an incentive for faculty to adjust their courses and gradings to meet that expectation.  Which leaves them less prepared for sophomore-level courses and so on.   [/quote]

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