During a conversation with my sister about going back to school to finish her electrical engineering degree she basically said this:

As an older student. What /I/ see is a bunch of students who don’t really know how the workforce works, but who HAVE grasped these facts:

1. The school wants you to have a social life. That’s why there’s all these events, and they cancel class for games and stuff sometimes. So you SHOULD be doing social stuff.

2. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and the only way to get ahead is to use every tool at your disposal, including and especially GenAI.

3. Everybody is doing it, especially the smart people, including the grad students, AND sometimes even the teachers. Even the professionals are like “this is how you can use ChatGPT!”

4. So, to get everything done and have A Good College Experience, obviously you just use ChatGPT! Why spend hours in the library like all those losers???

And, then, on the other hand, I see:

A bunch of very tired, overworked, overwhelmed teachers who are doing their damndest with students who can’t do even half of the bare minimum that was expected when they went through college.

Bending over backwards and then back upwards to pass these kids, by hook or by crook.

Like, people giving 100s of points of extra credit.

People putting together a whole website of specific terms for each unit AND the slide shows from the classes, quizzes that are pass/fail - as in, you get the credit if you take the quiz on time, period, regardless of what you get, so you can use it to review, AND the weekly essays are either:

1. 750 word summary of the reading + answer 4 questions (no word limit) + pose two questions about the text, no specifc formatting required.

OR

2. 250 word reflection: how does what we learned apply to your life? No specific format required.

I was writing 5 page research papers for classes my first year of college. What the fuck. What the fuck.

(She went back to school to finish her degree)

You’re telling me you can’t write a 750 word SUMMARY that doesn’t need to be formatted beyond “put your name on it and use punctuation”???

The classes themselves are not hard. IF you have a good grounding in logic and math and writing. Which these people DO NOT.

They have a good grounding in letting ChatGPT do the work for them and letting the teacher tell them how to do everything.

And goddamn I might get 77s because I can’t do algebra and I can’t do math fast enough to finish a test.

But at least I’m not failing because I can’t THINK.

She also mentioned that a lot of professors are kind of trying to walk the thin line between failing students (who will then go to places like "ratemyprofessor.com and leave what essentially amount to bad reviews which can threaten their employment), and passing students who aren’t actually grasping the basics and I think social media is just compounding the problem because of that.

Imagine working in fast food and already getting complaints all the time and then having to worry about someone putting you on a rate my server website where they trash talk you and you have no recourse to have that information taken down.

At least with yelp it’s not first and last names and it’s the business that takes the flak.