Failing Intro Economics

(1) As a recent-ish college grad, I can back this up. Lockdown began halfway through my final full-time semester, and even I noticed it in real-time. People don't connect with material presented in a Zoom call in the same way they connect with it in-person. Professors removed entire sections of their curricula to respond to this.

(2) I have nothing to say here. You're just plain right.

(3) Both you and the professor are right. Students have a lot of incentive to optimize for grades, in lieu of developing an actual appreciation of the material. In any class I didn't give a damn about (Economics 100, for example), I optimized for grades. Also, teaching out of a 20, 30, 40 year old book isn't conducive to interesting lectures. The information is almost always noticeably outdated. An economics 101 book with no mention of the subprime mortgage crisis or Dodd-Frank is just missing a chapter. And yes, I will be distracted by the details of a question that references such antiquated things as landlines and "neighbors you actually talk to." I think it's justified for students to expect that a decade's worth of crippling debt will pay for high quality, modern course materials.

(4) Not sure if this is anything new. Young people have been distrustful of institutions for as long as the idea of institution has existed. Maybe my generation doesn't have much trust in economists specifically. It seems like a field prone to the worst instincts of groupthink. Does every generation have a subject like that?

That's frankly not enough. That's plenty for a student who is on the cusp of slipping behind -- who's been trained on the culture of college since grade school.

And it's no help at all to the student who is mostly bewildered by the constant swarm of disjoint activity on a college campus. 4x so for a first generation student. These students understand math and exams. The cultural stuff in the middle mostly goes over their heads.

> If you don't pay your bills, people come and take your stuff.

What gave you the idea that younger generations aren't aware of this? About 17 out of 10,000 people in the US are homeless. The vast majority of people in the US are not experiencing what you are describing.

Considering that the same system is producing both students and teachers it seems very likely that the quality of both could be declining in a feedback loop. Less prepared instructors produce lower quality students who are themselves poor instructors.

I'm a new professor that was a devops engineer in the field until a year and a half ago. I understand that out in the field, we think professors are all just lazy out of touch academics, publishing papers to meet a quota; I used to think this myself. Some definitely are, but I think its important for the audience to understand that I am new to this, working very hard at being good at this, and primarily a teaching professor (I do not do research and teach a full load, no research or administrative duties). I teach computer science. These are my observations to the five points the author raises:

1. "First, attendance was sporadic with many of my students." I think this is true and always has been true for entry level college classes. You usually have a set of students who will never come, a set of students who will always come, and the middle is what you need to worry about. My solution to this is require attendance, which I first started this year. I've noticed remarkable differences in class; I'm more involved in learning, can fix problems earlier with less feedback time, and students are more engaged with the materials outside of class.

2. "Second, work outside of class was not done with consistency." This is a tough one. I was shocked to find how many students don't read anything. Not just the textbook; they don't read documentation or even the lab assignments. I'm sure this has been a thing since I was in school in the 2000's. I think this is a case of "students just don't know how to". I try to teach them how to read documentation, as it is a skill, not something natural to common life. I also think requiring short essays on reading material is superior over multiple choice because it makes "brute forcing" through the assignment less easy. You can just copy snippets from a web search, and that happens, but again, I'm just trying to move the "middle" here.

3. "Third, basic mathematics proficiency, whatever the claims of our admissions office, is greatly lacking." This is an interesting one too, especially in computer science. Most of my students in my entry level classes do not understand the concept of a filesystem. Using phones and chromebooks their entire life, they've never had to find files outside of a search field. Some know even less about how to use the computers we bring to class. I blame this on big tech making crappy products and driving people to appliance computers, but that's a rant for another day. This is surprising but not difficult to overcome; you just have to teach it in the first week. You lose valuable time you should be teaching the material to teaching "how to find your file to submit", but good pre-made materials can alleviate this somewhat.

4. "Fourth, students seemed reluctant to come to the office seeking help." This is definitely true, but also, they don't seek out reading the text/assignments for help or on campus tutoring. I also think this is something you have to teach; how to formulate a question based on something you don't know. I also want to mention here that cheating is rampant in computer science, so this is a more tempting approach for many students. Again, another issue for another discussion.

5. "Fifth, and finally, the introductory economics course, as stated in my 2014 Inside Higher Ed article, has remained somewhat constant." Other than the student learning outcomes (SLO's), courses in college are surprisingly flexible. I'm free to do pretty much what I want in the bounds of the SLO's. But: prepping a course is very work intensive, and it takes away from the student-centric work referenced in the other 4 points.

Anyway, in closing, just want to say that there are a lot of good hardworking, non-tenured, full time professors out there. Its the hardest I've ever worked in my entire career and the most challenging work I've ever done. A lot of the points raised in the article are true, and its not just "kids these days" but systemic problems ranging from early education, tech literacy, and motivations for even attending college.