Is this common in universities and community colleges in North America?

[hamburger]

Hi, I have taught at a community college for a few semesters. I noticed the following about the students. Is it just students in my school or it became common in both universities and community colleges in North America?

- Depending on the class, only 10-20% of the students are good or very good. They should be able to handle university level work. About 20% are trouble makers (see below). The rest are just average (through copying) or below average.

- Those trouble makers are students who blame and bully their professors. They like to complain to the department (sometimes even to the head) to get what they want. They are rude, disrespectful and feeling entitled. Depending on the benefits they could get, the majority of the class could join these trouble makers to complain like hell and file petitions. I have heard and experienced myself that they formed groups to complain so much that the department decided to grant multiple exceptions as it just takes "too much paperwork" for administrators to handle their complaints. These trouble makers also keep saying that they "pay" to come here and therefore they should pass or get high scores by default. Some of them do not even bother to search the internet for answers to simple questions. I have a student telling me that he is paying to come here not to search for information himself. He demanded me to do it for him. Some students also requested that I tell them what would be on the exam and teach them only how to solve those problems as it is a "waste" of their time to spend on things that will not be contribute to getting good scores. These people have no intellectual curiosity. I found it kind of insult that they keep mentioning about "paying" to come to school. I studied very hard to get a PhD. Yet, I am here to be treated by these lazy and low level students as if I were a waiter in a restaurant or a sales in a department store who take sh*t from customers.

- Whenever these trouble makers do not get what they want, they complain. They sent emails in the middle of the night, weekends and during my summer holiday. The course ended and a student kept sending me emails telling me how to manage the course account so that she could access her scores. I did not reply to her during the sensitive period that faculty members were told to be very careful about students asking their marks before the final scores are released. She complained to the department head that I ignored her. She also mentioned that she got top scores in other courses but did not do as well in my course. She threatened that if she could not get a satisfactory answer to her less than ideal marks, she would move up to the next stage and file a formal academic appeal against me. Now, the department even asked me to go back to school during my very short unpaid summer holiday to explain to her about my markings. The classmate of this student also asked me to show him my markings during my holiday.

- Students can pay to buy doctor's note. I have several students sending me 5 or 6 doctor notes in one semester to ask for all sorts of exceptions including delaying the final exam to next semester. Administrators know about this but they just play along as the students have "medical's notes".

- Some students just buy solutions of homework. Others told me that they can download some solutions for free.

- I heard that most students are foreign students paying more than locals. They use the school to get a visa to enter the country and spend most of the time (more than legally allowed) to work. They have no time to study nor able to come to class regularly. Even they do come, most of them are too tired already. I heard from administrators that it is not uncommon to have half of the class never showed up.

- I heard that by providing some medical documents, students can become some sort of special students. They are allowed to have more time to submit their assignments, write the exams, etc. There was no such thing when I was in school. Now there is a department serving many such "special" students.

- Usually bad students changed the facts and posted insulting comments about their professors on the internet to destroy their reputations. Colleagues who allow them to submit assignments any time they like even the due dates have long been passed, teach them how to answer questions to be on tests/exams so as not to "waste" their time, show them how to answer the questions "during exam!", give high marks easily are called "good professors". Those who are strict on due dates, do not give hints, etc. are called "the worst professor" in the school.

- Most students do not even bring paper nor pen to the class and to the lab. Same for tests and final exams. They always have to borrow from somebody.

- Students also do not want to read and follow instructions.

- At the beginning of a final exam, a colleague raised his hand while holding a pencil. He asked the students what that is. He told them that "this is a pencil" and it is used to fill in the bubbles for MC questions. He mentioned that each semester, despite the warning, there are students who use pen to fill in the answers.

- Some treat me as their PA. After they missed a class, they asked for details on what they missed.

- At the end of the course, some students do not know the name of their professors, the course code and section number. Some even do not know the acronym of a key term that had been discussed the entire term. Some even took the wrong exam on the wrong day!

- They have money to pay for data plan and to play but they don't have money to print out their assignments for submission.

- Whenever colleagues talk about their students, they all look very stressful and unhappy. A few colleagues even called the students "rubbish".

[Juvenal]

Community college?  Same here, and I would not wholly disagree with your percentages, but:

The shenanigans you list have never afflicted me.  Maybe it's the course (a STEM); maybe it's me (shaved head, physical size); maybe it's my chair (no nonsense permitted, no whining about self recalled the chair says), but I have never had any blowback that lingers in the mind (and the mind in the classroom goes back about half a century).

Maybe it's something in the water.

[spork]

If I remember correctly, you received several recommendations about your situation on the old Chronicle of Higher Ed forum.

[polly_mer]

Community college?  Same here, and I would not wholly disagree with your percentages, but:

The shenanigans you list have never afflicted me.  Maybe it's the course (a STEM); maybe it's me (shaved head, physical size); maybe it's my chair (no nonsense permitted, no whining about self recalled the chair says), but I have never had any blowback that lingers in the mind (and the mind in the classroom goes back about half a century).

Maybe it's something in the water.

"Trying desperately to keep the doors open" is a different situation than "trying to reach everyone where they are to contribute to individual educations while keeping an eye on the budget".

I didn't notice a distinction by market sector; I did notice a big difference between institutions that:

(A) were hoping for a miracle if they could just hold on through next term by whatever means available even while quietly lowering the bar well past good education

and

(B) institutions that were honest with themselves regarding their resources and how many students at various ability levels they can serve well enough with those resources

Case (A) tended to have high faculty turnover because of the working conditions as well as having students-in-name-only looking for a checkbox experience.

Case (B) tended to be better places to work and learn, but did have some existential angst about making potential students wait until the start of specific future term when the students could be accommodated according to the staffing plan.

The current standard advice is for people who find themselves employed at Case (A) to take jobs elsewhere, even leaving academia for the moment to pay the bills while looking for a different academic job.

[Golazo]

I haven't experienced anything this bad, but I do get a lot of excuses, requests for make ups, etc. I give anyone who wants a make-up, which tends to be harder than the default. Good students tend to do ok, poor students tend to do poorly, and no one complains because I gave them another chance.

One colleague who has it particularly bad gave a very easy class but had a really hard final, worth a significant percentage of the grade. Usually people couldn't be bother to follow up after the semester was over to complain.

One note--it is important not to consider all students with disability accommodation as trying to game the system. I'm not sure this is what you were implying with "special students" but I've found that students with disabilities  are a lot like other students--the contentious ones do well, the slackers do badly, and its doesn't have much to do with their accommodations. I have seen a couple of questionable accommodations--exception from attendance for all classes for four years--but this is very much the exception.

[craftyprof]

I thought that your estimate of the trouble makers seemed high until I saw your list of characteristics.  I don't believe that students with disability accommodations are trouble makers.  Nor do I think low income students are trouble makers (our campus wifi means that students don't need to use their data plan on campus, but they do have pay exorbitant printing charges to print anything out.  A couple of bucks to print materials for your class doesn't seem like a big deal until you learn how many of them have maxed out their student loans and are struggling to buy groceries)

I'd also look through the Jedi mind tricks thread to see if you can spare yourself some aggravation without lowering your standards.  (personally, I have zero interest in policing doctor's notes, so I choose to believe my students' excuses without documentation)

[hamburger]

I thought that your estimate of the trouble makers seemed high until I saw your list of characteristics.  I don't believe that students with disability accommodations are trouble makers.  Nor do I think low income students are trouble makers (our campus wifi means that students don't need to use their data plan on campus, but they do have pay exorbitant printing charges to print anything out.  A couple of bucks to print materials for your class doesn't seem like a big deal until you learn how many of them have maxed out their student loans and are struggling to buy groceries)

I'd also look through the Jedi mind tricks thread to see if you can spare yourself some aggravation without lowering your standards.  (personally, I have zero interest in policing doctor's notes, so I choose to believe my students' excuses without documentation)

I do not consider students with disability nor low income students as trouble makers. My problem is with those healthy active students who feel that they do not need to work hard to earn the grades they want, those who think they are customers and professors are servers, those who have the habit of forming teams to complain to the department directly when professors do not do what they want (a culture in my department), etc.

I have about two weeks of summer holiday. Almost half is gone because I had to mark papers and attend various departmental meetings. Now two students are hunting me during my vacation. After he found out his scores for the course, one student sent an email to the department head to threaten that if he is not satisfied with my explanations of his less than ideal performance, he would move up and file a formal academic appeal against me. He claimed that he got 80s in other courses but 70s in my course. As a result, it must be my problem! Now the department suggested me to see the student in the middle of my very short summer holiday. I still have to use my short holiday to prepare for courses that I may be assigned to teach in September. So during school terms I am busy teaching and dealing with some bad students who always complain. During my holidays, I also have to deal with these students and prepare for teaching. How not to think of entitled students who keep hunting me anytime they like when I am outside school? Since they are asking me to deal with the fault of the student during my vacation, does that mean the college and students do not respect vacation time of faculty members?

[polly_mer]

Why are you worried about a student filing an appeal?  Let him file and be  denied.

Don't deal with students during your very brief vacation.  Students can wait until you are again on the clock

"may be assigned to teach in September"?  I would be much more worried about pinning down my teaching assignments or lining up another job than dealing with last term's student informal complaints.

[backatit]

If you do not think students who get SAS accommodation and low-income students are troublemakers, then why did you list them in your post so dismissively?

You're not going to get a lot of helpful advice from me. Other than to advise that I don't deal with students during my vacation. Or stress about appeals. I keep my ducks in a row, and don't get a lot of appeals, but the ones I've had have taken care of themselves once I submitted the paperwork. And a couple of times I was wrong (gasp) so I corrected it.

[Ruralguy]

OP-

I think some things to ask yourself are whether this happens more to you than to other professors. If so, why?  Yes, it could be because you have higher standards, but sometimes standards can be too high for the student body you have. You may want to think about one or two things you can do to reduce the rate of student complaints, or at least put them in line with the average (if the average is high, then maybe the entire school has to rethink what they are doing).

You've said before that you don't have much choice in employment or location. I think then you should think more about making yourself happier in this setting and more about what would ensure your appointments. I don't mean bribing students with A's, but just some set of policies that seems friendlier than the current ones. What do other people with similar standards do?  That is, people who have been there a long time, students like them, but they still have standards.

[Scout]

If I remember correctly, you received several recommendations about your situation on the old Chronicle of Higher Ed forum.

Yes, this seems very familiar and most of us went round and round about this before.

[S-4711]

I taught at a college considered an "elite" SLAC for many years, and I saw some of what the OP mentions, but mostly in my role as adviser, and even then not often at all.

Very few grade challenges (and not really challenges, more of last-ditch begging), even though they were paying $60,000+ a year. My second semester there I had what the OP calls a "trouble maker," but the department sided with me and my colleagues told me it was a very rare event. I had a couple more students that I would call "annoying" rather than "trouble makers" early in my career, but that's all.

The college does have a department serving "special needs" students, primarily giving them more time on exams, a quiet space, permission to use a computer, but from what I saw it was used pretty responsibly. I recommended the center to more than one student.

I did have students who didn't know their course numbers and professors' names, even late in the semester. Never figured out what that was about.

[kaysixteen]

I get the point wrt setting one's academic standards to generally comport with one's student population, but only up to a point.  How does one rationalization, however, granting 'college' credit in a course for something that is clearly sub collegiate work, whether by giving a credit granting grade in a legitimately rigorous course for work that really doesn't legitimately qualify for such a mark, or by dumbing down the course to sub collegiate level in the first place?  CCs are still actually supposed to be *colleges*,right?

[Caracal]

The OP isn't going to listen but because this thread is out there it is worth pointing out that these are self created problems. Students are just people. Sometimes people are irritating in various ways. Half these things that enrage you aren't problems at all. Who cares if students don't bring a pen to their exams and have to borrow one. (Side note: I was this kid all through college) You're choosing to be personally offended about things that aren't your business.

Other things are just a bit annoying, but aren't worth this much aggravation. All of us hate when students ask what they missed, but all you say is "just ask someone for the notes, if you have any questions after that, I'd be happy to answer them."

Other stuff just needs to be managed so you don't spend time on it. Have some reasonable policies about missed classes and you won't spend time reading doctors notes. Once you have policies, you don't have to hector students, just explain the rules and how they work and move on. You can make exceptions in the rare cases where they are warranted, and tell everyone else sorry in a nice way.

All of us occasionally have the nightmare student who won't go away and makes various threats or goes to the chair, but I can count those students on two hands from 7+ years of teaching. That this happens to you regularly suggests something is going wrong and that at least some of these complaints might have some merit.

[hamburger]

The OP isn't going to listen but because this thread is out there it is worth pointing out that these are self created problems. Students are just people. Sometimes people are irritating in various ways. Half these things that enrage you aren't problems at all. Who cares if students don't bring a pen to their exams and have to borrow one. (Side note: I was this kid all through college) You're choosing to be personally offended about things that aren't your business.

Other things are just a bit annoying, but aren't worth this much aggravation. All of us hate when students ask what they missed, but all you say is "just ask someone for the notes, if you have any questions after that, I'd be happy to answer them."

Other stuff just needs to be managed so you don't spend time on it. Have some reasonable policies about missed classes and you won't spend time reading doctors notes. Once you have policies, you don't have to hector students, just explain the rules and how they work and move on. You can make exceptions in the rare cases where they are warranted, and tell everyone else sorry in a nice way.

All of us occasionally have the nightmare student who won't go away and makes various threats or goes to the chair, but I can count those students on two hands from 7+ years of teaching. That this happens to you regularly suggests something is going wrong and that at least some of these complaints might have some merit.

Each course has its own policies. In one course, students fail automatically if they don't show up in the lab for over three times. When the department enforced this policy, suddenly people started submitting notes. Half of the class did that. Notes ranging from 3 to 6! One student had a note from a doctor in the North of the city and another note from a doctor from the South, both on the same day. Even administrator got very annoyed about the situation.