This is so ass-backwards. This stupid article- published in Illinois, of all places – blames professors for assigning too much homework and interfering with all the part-time jobs and internships that students need to juggle to make ends meet.
The possibility that the shameful disinvestment of the state in higher education might have something to do with the issue is not even being discussed. It’s all the fault of evil professors who are trying to prevent students from working at McDonalds by trying to educate them.
This is the perfect example of two groups that suffer at the hands of the same enemy turn against each other.
Students! Professors are not to blame.
Professors! Students are not to blame.
Clarissa's Blog 
You’re completely right in this post. Blaming professors for giving too much homework is ridiculous.
However, by my own experience, I know that there are many lying professors (like my thesis’ co-advisor) who use their power to destroy students’ careers, but it’s never about “too much homework”.
The article’s photo is irrealistic, it represents a tiny proportion of TAs, like myself for example. (and I was blamed for that)
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Also, what’s your take about “grade inflation”?
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Nobody cares about grades in the workplace. (Unless you go to grad school, of course.) But employers seriously don’t care who got which grade in Spanish 101 or Calc 3. So I don’t obsess over grades. If everybody deserves an A, everybody gets it.
I think that professors who are too worried about “grade inflation” should stop taking themselves so seriously.
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“Unless you go to grad school, of course.”
Oh, and even in grad school, they use it only when they want to use it. When I was in grad school in Statistics, I was a very sloppy student; however, I was treated a lot better financially than when I was a very serious student in Epidemiology and Economics (although the Economics’ department used my grade (for this only one time) to recommend my candidacy for SSHRC, but they offer no real help to me after that, contrary to their promises: I should have not accepted this candidacy). It’s all about friendships and politics.
Now I’m a masochist, so I’m trying to see how it would turn out to be a very serious student in Mathematics and Statistics. It’s probably to late for me, but I like it!
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….too late…
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All of this whinging about excessive general ed homework is hilarious. I had more free time during the first 2 years of college than I did during high school. Aren’t they supposed to be better at “time management” and “planning?”
The only excessive busywork classes I’ve encountered are those taught online by Pearson.
The soft skills, such as communication, organization and cooperation that students develop while working with people in different workplace settings are valuable for their future careers.
Or in kindergarten. Or while planning Greek organization parties. Or volunteering on campus. Or doing a “group” project for class. Or you know, if you’re a non traditional student you’ve learned them already? They should scrap internships and make up a clinic where people pretend to go to work in an office environment so students can learn all of the white collar norms that apparently interns don’t know yet and employers aren’t willing to teach.
Wait….
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Yes, it is ass backwards. We’re telling people that manual labor is vanishing and that the only jobs in the future will require education, and then we are pricing it out of reach of most people. We know we have a consume3r economy, yet we are making it very difficult for people to qualify for good jobs and earn enough to be good consumers. How does that make any sense at all?
I know of one wealthy doctor who is sending all four girls to college in Europe. That’s what is going to happen.
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I prefer the idea that you’re both complicit in each other’s demise.
Think of it this way: the present-day student who does well and who thinks upon his university favourably may choose to leave an endowment by which he may be favourably remembered in turn.
Without this, the “public university” remains an unofficial arm of state policy, reacting directly to political stimuli and the withholding of much-needed cash. With these endowments, it becomes increasingly more likely for such a university to remain independent from present-day political sentiments.
Paulo Freire made one useful observation that definitely applies to the assignment of homework: the most useful type is the mini-project that engages the student in something that provides motivation and value.
Anything else should consist of basic instruction if it is not to turn into bureaucratic make-work, at least if you choose not to assist in the creation of another new generation of bureaucrats …
[and for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t give a rusty shilling to any of the universities I attended, but I do have some library design projects that are rather interesting …]
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I don’t think our students are likely to get so rich that they’d be in a position to leave endowments. It never happened before. Our goal is to get them into the middle class.
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I don’t assign a lot of “homework” but I do assign reading and I think it is important. Students now though are convinced by many advisors that it is jobs and extracurricular activities that will get them into graduate school. What about having an academic background (not grades, a background) that prepares them? Somehow this seems not to be discussed?
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