After what increasingly seems like a lightning fast roller-coaster ride, I recently huffed and puffed my way to submitting final grades, which marked the end my 61st semester of university teaching. You could say that the huffing and puffing is due to my age or my physical condition. Neither would be true. I may be approaching "elder" status, but I am physically fit. You could say that so many years of university teaching have made me weary of the old routines -- same subject, anthropology and the same set of courses. But as time as passed, I've come to enjoy teaching a great deal.
So if I'm physically fit and enjoy teaching, why do I find myself exhausted by the end of a 15-week semester?
Part of the reason, perhaps, is the importance that our institutions place upon getting grades. Students, of course, have always been very much concerned about grades. Getting good grades has always been a good a way to move forward on the highway that leads to successful careers in medicine, law, information technology or business. On that venerable highway there has never been much time for taking a frivolous detour that leads to an uncertain destination. In recent years, though, student tunnel vision seems to have become even more narrowly focused. Many of the students I teach would like me to agree to a grand bargain: the best possible grade for the least amount of effort. There are, of course, notable and inspiring exceptions. Even so, every semester students have the chutzpah to ask me to change their grade -- for no good reason. Two weeks ago, one of my introductory students who had earned a "C+" wondered if I could change her grade to "B-."
"Can't I get some extra points for attending class?" she asked.
Another student, who had barely passed my introductory class, wrote:
"Is there any way you could change my grade to a "C-?" she asked, not even offering up her record of attendance as an argument for a grade change.
Fortunately, student encounters about grades, which are always a bit irritating, are few and far between. They don't account for my end-of-semester fatigue.
Something has changed in higher education. When I began professing in 1980, there seemed to be more time to teach. We had the same 15-week semesters, but my courses were much more demanding -- for both me as well as for my students. We covered more topics and did so in greater depth. The readings were more extensive. I assigned more research papers, which required extensive work in the library. Students found the time come to my office for conversations about anthropology, philosophy, literature, or even the meaning of life! These days most of my students complain about not having enough time to do the course readings, let alone a series of moments to do more than a cursory amount archival research for a paper. Some of them hand in assignments after the due date. Most of them avoid my office and any kind of serious face-to-face social interaction. Although the aforementioned grade disputes do require some degree of professor-student interaction, they are usually argued in the impersonal domains of cyberspace.
There are external forces that have propelled these educational changes. In these hard times, many contemporary students have to work one or two jobs to pay for college expenses. Accordingly, they have little extra-time to read beyond the assignment, daydream, or to take intellectual risks. Contemporary professors, for their part, are so saddled with so many corporately contoured administrative tasks -- committee work, assessment studies, assessment workshops, assessment reports, peer evaluations, student evaluations, not to forget large classes to teach, grade, and, lest I forget, assess -- that we have little time to think about what we've done or what we want to do.
Every semester over-worked students have a limited amount of time to study. Professors are "too busy" to refine their teaching or pursue their research, which usually improves the quality of instruction. Students and professors are trapped in increasingly corporate institutions of higher learning that are designed for processing products -- moving student bodies through institutional stages -- that produce positive institutional profiles.
Incessant institutional processing produces a great deal of end-of-the-semester student and professorial fatigue, a symptom that something important is missing from the mix of elements on our university campuses. Higher education should be more than a system for processing student bodies. Indeed, it should be the serious attempt to teach young people how to be in the world--an attempt that will set a course for the future.
If we recognize the fatigue for what it is, we should use the Winter Break to recharge our existential batteries and begin anew the pursuit of knowledge.
Here's a New Year's resolution for college students: make a habit of visiting your professors and discussing the world of ideas. Taking such a small step will not only be rewarding for students and professors, but will make the university a little less corporate and a little more humane, which means, that everyone benefits.
Follow Paul Stoller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/stol1
Actually, they are 18 more credit hours for material for you to learn, and to learn well.
Bitch about the extra hours if you want, but if you want the degree, stop bitching and actually learn the !&@!& material.
You'd be amazed how some of those non-science classes actually make you a better scientist. (Some of the best solutions to programming problems, in my career, have come from abstract-math classes that kept away from applied-math content intentionally.)
Oh and FYI, congratulations on applying abstract-math classes to programming. That's really swell... but how about anthropology or literature classes. I suppose the Kong bushmen or the works of Henry Fielding really come in handy too. Dude seriously get over yourself.
Further, like the author, I too have found myself more and more exhausted by the end of the term. I know why. I am doing more clerical work, answering more e-mails, teaching more students (a 40% increase over last year at this time), and receiving less pay for my efforts than ever. Because states have cut their funding to higher education, colleges have been forced to cut their work force. As a result, many jobs that were once handled by support staff have now been passed off to faculty, because, after all, we have software that supposedly makes the job quick and easy. That means faculty like me spend hours on tasks that are essentially clerical.
Couple that sad fact with the billions of dollars that the for-profit "education"-industrial complex extorts from working families every year...and you have the makings of nothing but another corporatist sham.
Keep the populace dumbed-down, numbed-up and just smart enough to run the machines and fill out the paperwork. Business as usual.
Then the Universities would not have to keep raising their tuition. And - as a pleasant side effect - the potential students themselves would not have to scrounge and scrimp so much to afford the tuition as they (or their parents) would be better off financially.
"Big Education" - outside of the For Profit end of Education - is a myth.
I know I met several professors who intellectually challenged me as an undergrad - and a couple in particular who heavily influenced my career direction and continue to influence me (unknown to them) today.
=Add on the fact that, at most schools, classes don't begin until the second week in September and, by the first week in May, final exams have begun. This certainly helps to explain the professor's feeling of being cramped for time to teach.
=I can't remember the exact figure; but, a few years back, someone calculated the "cost per hour of instruction" at an expensive private college--roughly $50,000/year divided by those 15 hours/week times the number of weeks of "school" (don't forget to leave out Christmas Vacation, Winter Break, Spring Break, and other holidays). The number was astounding, something on the order of $150.00 per hour.
[And, of course, that includes classes paid for but "cut" by students recovering from the previous night's or weekend's parties!]
The old rule of thumb when I was an Undergrad (and a rule I am sure I too regularly violated) was that for every hour spent in class you should expect to have to spend 1-2 hours reading, working problems, researching or studying in order to actually master the material.
Back in the day (early 1980s) when I was a budding Science major at a Big Ten University I was taking classes that met ~18-25 (depending on the semester) hours / week. I was working ~20-25 hours / week for wages (you gotta eat) at the same time. So - add in the 20-25 hours / week I was at least supposed to spend studying/reading/researching,... and it is more than a full time job to be a student and do it right.
I have students now (at my Community College) who are trying to take a full load of courses (>12 hours), while working a 40-hour / week job - many while trying to raise kids. Something has got to give in their situations and often it is study time.
"A Teacher Opens the Door. The Student Must Walk Through."
- Chinese Proverb.
When my husband became a professor (at the same university) in the 1980s, things had changed. Over the past 30 years, my husband's department has eliminated all but 1 support staff, and all social spaces. He is expected to prepare all of his own course materials, maintain any on-line presences, process all grades, paperwork, travel arrangements (his own and visiting faculty) and answer constant emails from students and Parents!! He is a grade producer.
When my father became a professor, his working class parents were impressed (they would have been more impressed with medicine or law, but still...) When my husband became a professor, it was seen as a job, just like any other. Good or bad, higher education has changed.
http://heresheisboys.com/category/education-2/
I think you want the word "lightning" instead of "lighting" in the first sentence.
No - Let's face it - most college classes are what you chose to make of them.