The average college student today

Academic Standards, Failure, and Institutional Incentives

• Many argue schools and universities are structurally disincentivized from failing students: funding, rankings, and job security push toward higher pass and graduation rates.
• Stories of K‑12 teachers being pressured by parents and administrators to pass students who do no work are common.
• At the college level, some see “weed‑out” rigor disappearing; others note this was already true decades ago and suspect nostalgia and personal burnout.
• Several point out: if universities keep graduating functionally illiterate students, degrees lose signaling value.

Phones, Social Media, and Attention

• Broad agreement that smartphones and engagement‑optimized apps severely damage attention spans and executive function, especially for students who grew up with them.
• Proposed responses range from school‑day phone bans (already implemented in some districts and countries) to bans on algorithmic feeds and addictive app design.
• Others push back: phones are just tools; the real issues are parenting, overwork, trauma, and a broken K‑12 system. Bans may also socially isolate kids.
• Some argue education must adapt to a world of ubiquitous screens rather than nostalgically insisting on 50‑minute, passive lectures.

AI, Cheating, and Writing

• Many instructors report a “tsunami” of AI‑generated work and feel traditional take‑home essays are no longer viable.
• Some students openly describe reliance on LLMs, cycling prompts until something runs, then debugging by trial and error.
• A minority use LLMs as tutors or code reviewers and claim genuine learning gains; others see this as wishful thinking that masks skill atrophy.
• There’s tension between calling AI use “cheating” vs. treating it as a professional reality students must learn to harness.

Lectures, Slides, Textbooks, and Cost

• Strong disagreement over the professor’s refusal to share slides: many see this as ego or outdated pedagogy, especially when slides are shown in class anyway.
• Others defend note‑taking as part of learning and say recorded or slide‑based teaching often leads to students skipping both.
• Textbook cost is heavily contested: some call $35–$100 per course reasonable; many students insist that across 4–5 courses it’s unaffordable and often unnecessary, given poor or unused texts.
• Several note the gap between humanities expectations (reading whole books) and STEM norms (using books as references, not cover‑to‑cover readings).

Transactional College and Student Motivation

• Widespread view: students treat college as a credential purchase, not a “life of the mind,” because middle‑class jobs effectively require degrees.
• Some defend students: with high debt, precarious job markets, and housing crises, optimizing for employability over “being a whole human” is rational.
• Others insist that university’s core value is precisely non‑instrumental: learning how to think, write, and engage with difficult texts.