mrbadger wrote: ↑Tue, 8. Jun 21, 12:54
One thing that does worry me is how many students I see who are busy accumulating around £50,000 in debt (excluding overdrafts), but don't bother putting enough effort in to their university studies. As if the only important thing is to just scrape a pass mark and 'achieve a degree'. This of course isn't really a viable thing. It is a thing they do, but it doesn't really work.
I can think of a couple reason. The first one is the culture of "plastic", after all debt is hardly an issue exclusive to the student population. Often time when I look at 2 "average" working people, one with a good financial status and one buried under credit debt it's not their circumstances that makes the different, but rather one is just more financial literate and discipline then the other. And students ... well, they are probably one of the most financial illiterate population you can have. Half of the people I know taking students loan spent it on stuffs that's not even related to school expense. Rather they treat a few thousand dollars that suddenly "fall on their laps" as stuffs they can enjoy now and worry about 'later', because to them 4-5 years down the line seems to be a life time away. Most young people does not pocess the awareness to appreciate how fast life will flash you by ... and its consequence.
The other reason is the failure of the system to "prepare" students for college education, and by that I don't mean just in term of academic, but attitude and mentality as well. This is something I can speak from personal experience as someone who grew up in Asian where the expectation in general education / K12 / college were very tough (I understand different countries in the West call them differently):
I came to the US after grade 10th so I spent 2 years (11th and 12th) in highschool here in the US and my impression is ... highschool students in America seem to have less work and expectation than even an elementary student in Vietnam. I struggled a little bit at first due to the language barrier but after that, I spent less than half of the effort I used to in Vietnam and still passed with flying color in a foreign country. I grew complacent
(thinking I must be a genius!*), went to university and almost fail half of my classes in the first 2 semesters and end up losing all of my scholarship as a result. It was a shocking wake up call and I told myself "I need to get back my Asian mentality fast or I gonna sink!!" I consider myself lucky because I had that old reference (my time in Vietnam) to re-adjust myself to, but to other students who never had that in their life ... it's easier to see why they seemly fell through the hole under their feet.
*In the decade after, I notice this is an issue that often comes up in conversation. Kids are often coddled to think themselves as the next Eisenstein pre-college, but once they get there they got hit with the reality that "you are nothing special", and a lot can't cope with that.
mrbadger wrote: ↑Tue, 8. Jun 21, 12:54
The issue here being when they hit my more advanced modules, and those of my colleagues who teach advanced, yet required topics, they are totally unable to cope, so things fall apart for them.
I liken it to spending their three years ordering a Macbook, then smashing it every month. I imagine most of them wouldn't do that, but they do refuse to attend lectures and workshops that are costing them the same amount.
My guess (and I'm pretty confident about it) is because the students are simply go through the same motion they did in general education, where that kind of behavior was accepted and still get them what they want. I would bet as an instructor, if you have to sump up all the explanation in one short sentence, it would be something like: "that is not how college works!"