Comment by BrenBarn

As someone who teaches college students, I agree with a lot of this. This sums it up pretty well:

> Students are less respectful of the university experience ---attendance, lateness, e-mails to me about nonsense, less sense of responsibility

The most noticeable dimension for me is this one:

> During the Covid lockdown, faculty bent over backwards in every way we knew how to accommodate students during an unprecedented (in our lifetimes) health crisis. Now students expect that as a matter of routine.

In my experience, no matter what flexibility is given up front (e.g., drop lowest quiz score), there will always be some students who ask for additional accommodations. In particular there seems to be a common belief among students that all deadlines are "soft", and they should be able to turn in any missed work any time before the end of the term. Sometimes they'll expect a late penalty, but it seems like a real shock to many students to be told, "No, if you don't submit the assignment by the deadline, your score is zero."

I taught a little bit online during the pandemic and initially I thought there were some benefits to keeping some things online, but now I'm not so sure. For instance, doing tests online means they don't take up in-class time. But the extent to which people seem willing to cheat or otherwise cut corners has me seriously considering whether I should revert to in-person paper tests.

The article does veer a bit into stuff that seems a bit more questionable to me. Like, I can see not wanting to pay $100 for a textbook --- and this is especially true because students are often jaded by having many classes where they buy a $100 textbook and only need to read a few chapters, so it doesn't seem worth it. Likewise, it seems reasonable to me to provide the lecture slides, although I agree that it's annoying when students pester and pester to get them.

My impression of students' reading and writing abilities is also a more positive than the article author's, although that may be because the school I teach at is more competitive. But it's in the low-level logistics (like attendance) where I see the biggest decline in student behavior.

I should also say that in pretty much every class I teach, there are still a substantial number of engaged and motivated students. It's just that the lower bound for the standard students have for themselves has been lowered even more, and the average has dropped a bit towards that lower bound.