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Young adults adrift: why?

6/19/2015

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Looks like good old Arum & Roksa are at it again, following up their 2011 Academically Adrift with a new book, Aspiring Adults Adrift.  And, just as in their first book, it appears this doomsday duo wants to lay all the blame for today's "adrift" young adults at the feet of university professors. 

In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks buys glibly into Arum & Roksa's assumption: "The average student at a four-year college studies alone just over one hour per day. That is roughly half of how much students were compelled to study just a generation ago," says Brooks in his paraphrase (emphasis mine). Meanwhile, Brooks continues, "Colleges have become socially rich, stocked with student centers, student organizations, expensive gyms, concerts and activities."

(Clearing throat)  Ahem. Yes, I've noticed that many colleges are emphasizing extra-curricular amenities over academics, expanding their facilities rather than their faculties, and agonizing over whether they have rock-climbing walls and gourmet cafeterias rather than investing in pointless little things like ... teaching.  (Please read sarcasm here.)  

But where is this distorted sense of priorities coming from? I don't know any single faculty member who supports the continual leaching of funding from academics and toward flashy facilities, or the increasing reliance on and exploitation of adjunct faculty while investing more and more money in stuff like swimming pools.  For the sake of argument I'll concede that some such people might exist somewhere. But from my vantage point it appears that, as much as academics are notorious about disagreeing, most of us share similar dismay about the shift from scholarly pursuits  toward things that should be peripheral to our central mission.

This distorted sense of priorities, I would argue, reflects the priorities of certain (not all) administrators, rather than faculty--though faculty are always the ones blamed when students don't appear to be learning enough.  A generation ago, says Brooks, students were "compelled" to study much more; nowadays, according to Brooks, today's students have attended colleges where they were "not taught to work hard."

But if a student fails to work hard, who is responsible for that?  And how much is the onus on the college to "compel" students to study?

I find much more compelling the argument made by Hunter Rawlings in a June 9th article for the Washington Post: "College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one." Rawlings criticizes our society's penchant for analyzing the "value" of a college education in "purely economic terms"--a subject in itself, of course. After discussing the non-monetary value of education, he then points out what most of us who teach already know: "The value of a  degree depends more on the students' input than on the college's curriculum." Here he states something that most of us who teach have witnessed: "I have seen excellent students get great educations at average colleges, and unmotivated students get poor educations at excellent colleges." 

What matters most, says Rawlings--and this certainly resonates with me--is student effort: "You need a professor who provokes and a student who stops slumbering." Universities do, of course, have responsibilities to meet, and it's a two-way street: "It is the responsibility of colleges and universities to place students in environments that provide these opportunities.  It is the responsibility of students to seize them."

I don't argue completely with some of Arun & Roksa's findings; as someone whose job it is to teach and mentor college-age students, I do see that many of them have a difficult time, at least initially, with navigating post-college life. The challenges that Arum & Roksa refer to--difficulty in finding good jobs or establishing stable and long-term romantic relationships--are real situations for many.

But what might be the underlying reasons? Are today's "adrift young adults" products of a university system that failed to "compel" more studying, as Brooks suggests? Is the difficulty that many young adults encounter with finding good jobs--or, closely related, the fact that many move back with their parents for a while after college--the result of lax demands by lazy university professors?  (As for the problem of establishing stable romantic relationships--I could expound for hours on that subject, but is this even remotely related to the purpose of a college education?)

Or, could it be that we have an American culture that is too often anti-intellectual and lazy? Could it be that we are obsessed with instant gratification, meaningless entertainment, and mindless consumption? Could it be that our consumeristic society promotes the commodification of everything, including education, and including human beings? 

Could it be that well-paying jobs for young adults are scarce because corporate greed has made it systematically more difficult for young adults to find decent jobs? 

Could it be that college graduates often move back home not because they're psychologically perpetual teenagers made lazy by "slacker" colleges, but because in a world where most wealth is controlled by a tiny minority, their economic situation necessitates a shared housing situation?  

Could it be that too many university administrators, eager to grab student tuition dollars, are all too willing to offer students the same pablum that permeates the rest of our culture, rather than modeling a different set of possibilities through their own spending and planning priorities?

In his discussion of Arum & Roksa's latest, Brooks takes an interesting turn when he suggests that life itself often teaches young adults what they need to learn. He optimistically claims (though without providing evidence) that "by age 30, the vast majority of them are through it"--"it" being the general aimlessness of the 20-something years.  "After a youth dazzled by possibilities and the fear of missing out," says Brooks, "they discover that committing to the few things you love is a sort of liberation."  

On that point I agree with Brooks--commitment is the key to a successful adulthood.  To make a choice almost always means choosing against something else.  That's why it can be hard to decide to marry someone, or what field to major in, or where to go on this summer's vacation, or what to order for tonight's dinner. Growing up, to a large extent, is about accepting and ultimately embracing the choices we make, recognizing what the late folk singer Harry Chapin sang in his under-appreciated ballad "Story of a Life": "For every dream that took me high, there's been a dream that's passed me by." 

And if we want a few dreams to "take us high"--a few goals realized, a few life visions achieved--we have to commit: This primary relationship and not that one. This home and not another. This career; this hobby; these children. This life. 

We also have to do the hard work demanded by all those things; any dream worth the trouble requires considerable time, energy, and effort.  In our current consumeristic, convenience-minded, capitalistic, commodified society (how's that for alliteration?), fulfilling our goals often means going against the grain, tuning out countless cultural messages, joining forces with the like-minded, and persisting in the face of extremely long odds.

The irony is that for all the hand-wringing by people like Brooks, Arum & Roksa about the supposed inefficacy of the 20-something generation, they actually play into that very possibility when they suggest that young adult laziness lies in the failure of the university to "compel" sufficient study time.  If we really want more of our young adults to step up to the plate sooner, to take charge of their own lives more readily, to make the sometimes-tough choices and commitments that adulthood requires, then we have to ask them to do exactly that.  Rather than putting all the onus on colleges, we need to heed the words of Rawlings: "Good teachers 'supply oxygen' to their classrooms . . . students need to make a similar commitment to breathe it in and be enlivened by it." Placing the onus entirely on the teacher actually perpetuates the kind of "learned helplessness" that Arun & Roksa find so troublesome.

Finally, if we want today's young adults to be successful, we'd also do well to work toward creating a world more rich in opportunity for all--a world in which higher education is economically accessible for all who are willing to make the effort, a world in which decent-paying jobs are easier to come by than they are now.  Not least of all, we need to work toward a world in which those held most accountable are not the young and powerless and indebted, but those who actually have the power and the means to provide opportunities to today's young adults.

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To be here, or not to be here? (an end-of-year teacher self-reflection)

6/7/2015

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The 2014-15 academic year is finally in the books.  And, like so many educators I know--particularly in arts and humanities fields--lately I often find myself pondering whether it makes sense to keep on doing this or not.  

If I were easily persuaded by vitriolic public discourse, I'd probably decide no. It's all so dispiriting--the public perception that humanities degrees are useless, or that professors are out-of-touch, lazy slobs who work ten hours per week; the erosion of tenure protections (along with public misconceptions about what tenure is and is for); attacks on academic freedom; the exploitation of part-time adjunct faculty; non-replacement of full-time faculty members who retire or leave; calls for "accountability" and "assessment" that strip-mine our curricula and straitjacket our teaching; the unwelcome meddling of for-profit entities; reduced access to higher education by those lacking economic privilege, not to mention reduced access to the professoreate as a career path ... the list is so endless that I'm sure I'm leaving out something crucial.

So many low points this year.  Yet still so many highs. (Insert cliched expression about roller-coasters here.)

This particular roller-coaster was the sadistic type--one that saves its final nauseating loop-de-loop for the final seconds.  Fall semester was crazy, spring semester crazier. As for the final weeks of spring semester--I don't even know what word there is for that, and an English professor deprived of lexicon is a rare thing indeed. (Note under Archives, the lack of entry for May 2015. There are reasons for this gap.)

The world keeps spinning.  As does my head. 

all-day workshops on core competencies and accreditation ... how to operationalize measurements of creativity without standardizing them ... students aren't learning enough and it isn't their fault for not showing up or doing the homework, it's our fault ... spreadsheets, budgets ... behind-the-scenes wrangling ... revision of major degree requirements ... new joint degree plans, negotiations ... new general education plan, how to assess it ... scheduling challenges ... enrollment projections ... exhaustion ... honor society induction ceremony, with pizza (there's always pizza) ... student learning outcomes, or are they objectives, and what's the difference ... assessing senior portfolios ... capstone symposium  ... leave capstone symposium early when son's school calls to say he's broken his foot in P.E. ... senior seminar papers ... final class day, potlucks, senior tears ... grading ... grade complaints ... student evaluations ... spousal kidney stones while teenager recovers from pneumonia ... party for graduating seniors ... photos ... 

A week before graduation, two of our English majors get married in the backyard of a house shared by four of our alumni.  Most of the wedding party and guests are students, alumni and faculty in our small program. Four weeks earlier, many of the same people had gathered for a colleague's memorial service. 

Five days later, many of the same people gather in our town's arena for our graduation ceremony.  When students  walk across stage, I am the one to read many of their names.  (Workshop presenter has suggested  we follow up with these "data points" in the future, as they may--or may not--provide us with "indirect evidence of institutional effectiveness," depending on whether they go on to demonstrate "success." Today, the data points are wearing caps and gowns and honor cords and an array of interesting shoes.)

speeches ... meeting students' families ... photos ... farewells ... my husband, who teaches in a different field at a different institution, wins an Excellence in Teaching Award ... celebrations ... family visit ... birthday celebration for colleague's baby ... 

A graduating senior presents several of us with customized coffee mugs featuring end-of-semester group photos from classes we taught.

grant requests and travel forms, committee meetings and task forces, draft conference paper and update CV ... asthma attack and bout with sinusitis ... web site updates ... draft 2016 schedule ... fall adjunct staffing ... ad placement ... HR rules constantly changing ... prominent administrator at competitor institution says faculty are not being "fully utilized," though most--like me--are clocking sixty hours per week or more ... 

Our graduating senior class presents the entire faculty with a yearbook they have created themselves on Shutterfly, compiled of scenes from this crazy, wild roller-coaster ride of an academic year. They've been photographing themselves, and us, all along--documenting their last year together in this small program at a little-known institution. On the last few pages they each write a handwritten message to our faculty as a whole. 

They say things like, "You all will never know just how big a role you played in my life and success. Thank you for all of the opportunities and support you've given me in my time here." "You will never truly know the full extent of your positive impact on my life, both personally and academically." "I am forever thankful and blessed to have been taught by you all. I wish you could all follow me to my next location!" "Thank you for teaching me to be a better thinker and better person.  You all made a huge difference in my life."

Self-reporting is suspect in the data world, but I'm told we can indeed use this  yearbook as "indirect evidence" of "student success"--provided it's "triangulated" with other "meaningful data," including objective corollaries that "prove" we actually have taught our students to become "better thinkers." 

Better people? Positive impacts on personal lives? Who tracks that? 

Three weeks after our university's graduation ceremony, my teenage son "graduates" from middle school.  For this sort-of-ceremony, there are no caps or gowns or honor cords, they all wear practical shoes, and no band plays "Pomp and Circumstance"--it's just a short assembly in the school cafeteria.  Still, each kid is called by name and walks across the stage to a round of applause.  

I don't applaud for my son alone. I've known many of these kids since they were small--either I tutored them in reading as a parent volunteer during kindergarten, first and second grades, or my husband coached them in basketball and/or soccer, or all of the above.  Many of them, I've watched sprout from near toddlers to teenagers. 

It's only going to be four more years until many of them show up in a college freshman composition course like the one I teach.  I imagine they will be much like my own college freshmen at first--nervous, skittish, a bit uncertain as they begin to negotiate the huge gap between high school and college. 

Four years after that, most of them will--I hope--walk confidently across the stage as young adults ready to make their way in our crazy and confusing world. Like our graduating seniors did three weeks ago. I remember when most of them were freshmen too.

The middle-school principal speaks to the audience of young teens and proud parents.  He tells us, "We're pressed a lot from all sides right now--pressed to make our students high-school ready, so they can be made college-ready and career-ready. I have every confidence you will all be college and career-ready. What matters to me even more is that you become better people. I know many people who make less money than I do and have less influence, yet many of those people are role models for me. I also know many people who make more than I do and have more influence, yet many of those people are not role models for me. Yes, I want you all to be successful, however you define success. But even more, I want  you to be compassionate, decent human beings, even if nobody is putting the pressure on us to produce that."

more celebrations ... more goodbyes ... students move away, some very far away, including the newlyweds ... some who left long ago come back to visit ... son registers for high school  ... elementary school puts on elaborate end-of-year show ... my children bring home yearbooks signed by their friends ... prepare fall syllabi ... consult enrollment data ... more bad press ... teachers are lazy ... humanities fields are a waste of time ... we need to prove we're doing our jobs ... Prove it!

I re-read the handwritten signatures in the yearbook produced voluntarily by our graduating seniors, now alumni (also known as "data points"). 

"Words can't express my gratitude for all you've done to change my life for the better."

Not everything that matters can be expressed by words. Or even data. 

I'm in for another year.  Another year of one day at a time. Another year, I hope, of ups.  A year, I hope, with fewer--or at least less extreme--downs.

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    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    The Underground Professor teaches English at a small private university. This blog explores how we might revitalize the humanities in the twenty-first century--and why it's important that we do so, in light of the our culture's current over-emphasis on profitability, quantitative measurement, and corporate control.


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