when I was talking about “problematic kids”, I was not talking about “smart and lazy”. I was talking about “actually does not understand college level work and cannot perform at a competent adult level”. Believe me, there are a LOT of kids in that category.

If a child is not able to understand college level work and cannot perform at an competent adult level, then should that not be taken as a sign that the child concerned is not ready for college at that stage of his/her life?

You’re point is well taken that we as a society do not provide enough for “problematic” children, adolescents, and young adults who screw up early in life who need a second chance. I am not sure, however, the answer lies in the college becoming an effective extension of high school as you seem to be advocating.

Moreover, if parents who are paying ~$40k/year really are concerned about “amateur TAs” teaching their children…their children have the option of attending small private liberal arts colleges where the undergrads have much more access to “Professional Profs” teaching their courses. As someone who attended one such institution on a generous college scholarship, the environment gives you a great deal of access to your Profs without the “amateur TAs” getting in the way. Last I checked, my alma mater’s current yearly tuition is right around $45k/year.

While I was working professionally, I attended a summer stats course at an Ivy which was populated with 300 students and 6 TAs. From my impression, the quality of TAs was just as variable as Profs….ranging from the atrociously terrible to downright terrific. My TA happened to be downright terrific and I actually learned just as much about stats from him as I did from the lecturing Professor….and I learned quite a bit.

Maybe because the parents are paying $45,000 a year for the privilege of having amateurs teach their children?

Bloix,

I want to second Linnaeus’ comment #73 to explain the situation. I also would like to refer you to the first part of my comment (exholt #71).

You may also want to look at the last paragraph of my comment #44 to see why I see helicopter parenting in the academic context as one manifestation of parents and their child(ren) attempting to cheat the system at the expense of their child(ren)’s classmates. In short, this action is almost always one of unethical and selfish rich/well-off parents trying to gain unearned privileges for their child(ren) at the expense of other classmates, especially the diligent harder working ones. Remember, the TAs and Profs are responsible for all the students at the college/university, the world does not revolve solely around your own child(ren).

If your child’s test grade/final grade is “subpar” by his/her/your own standards, the first thing I would think a responsible parent would do is to explain to the adult child(ren) that they should first figure out whether their academic work habits were the cause and if so, to figure out ways to remedy this problem for the next test/course (preferably on their own initiative). Only in extremely rare cases where the child(ren) has found the “sub-par” grade was due to a numerical error or instructor bias and s(he) has exhausted all his/her own attempts at getting the issue resolved due to an unresponsive instructor(s)/administrators should the parents be involved. Among the multitude of friends and classmates I’ve known well in undergrad and grad school over the last several years, I’ve only known of one such extreme case where parental involvement may have been necessary…a working-class high school friend at an Ivy whose calc professor failed him because that Prof had a blatant animus against engineering students which took two years to correct even with the deans of both Engineering and Arts & science schools working on his behalf. Even then, he managed to get it resolved without getting his parents involved.

…by putting unqualified, untrained, unprepared TA’s into the classroom. What pedagogical education does a TA have? Hell, what substantive knowledge does a TA have? You have a BA. That’s it. And you think you are entitled to sneer at people who are delaying their retirements for years in order to pay for you to teach their children. Well, ignorance and arrogance go hand in hand – that’s nothing new.

In my program, pedagogical education is part of our training as teaching assistants. The university offers it at the beginning of one’s career as a TA, and our department offers it pretty much continuously, both in the form of frequent seminars and as a course that every TA must take. Furthermore, there are some things you just don’t learn about teaching until you do it.

As for substantive knowledge, well, TAs typically have quite a bit of it. Not only (again, in our department) are you not typically made a TA until you have the equivalent of a master’s degree, but you’re either taking advanced courses while you’re TAing, or you’ve passed your general exams and you’re in the dissertation stage. At that point, you have quite a bit of knowledge, and are even allowed to teach your own course occasionally.

Keep in mind that in this equation, the TA is probably the least powerful person. He/she doesn’t determine the content of the course, doesn’t (officially) have final say over course grades, and isn’t the one who ultimately determines which course she or he will be a TA for. The TA’s job security and pay are relatively low especially in light of the education he or she has and the duties he or she is expected to carry out.

No one here, from what I’ve seen, thinks students and parents should be sneered at for being concerned about their educations. That’s fine. But education is a product that is unlike any other in that the outcome depends on considerable input from the consumer, rather than a simple purchase of a product or service that is entirely created by someone else. That means that the student has responsibility to do his or her part in the process. One doesn’t deserve a grade solely on the basis of payment of tuition.

To be fair, I’ve not run into this attitude a whole lot, at least not openly. Most students and parents I know understand this. A student may not always agree with how I evaluate him or her, but he or she usually understands the responsibilities everyone in the process has.

Yeah . . . why don’t professors and TAs just laugh parents off of the phone? Because I would.

I don’t know. Maybe because the parents are paying $45,000 a year for the privilege of having amateurs teach their children? It is just astonishing the way universities crap all over their customers – ie the parents who pay the bills – by putting unqualified, untrained, unprepared TA’s into the classroom. What pedagogical education does a TA have? Hell, what substantive knowledge does a TA have? You have a BA. That’s it. And you think you are entitled to sneer at people who are delaying their retirements for years in order to pay for you to teach their children. Well, ignorance and arrogance go hand in hand – that’s nothing new.

When you’re having to take out $40,000 in college loans (on the low end) that you’re going to have to pay back over the next 10 years, you bet your sweet patootie that you’re going to look at that college degree as a commodity that you are paying good money for.

I don’t think we’re necessarily in disagreement….we’re just looking this issue in a slightly different way.

I tended to look upon my college education as an investment in a learning opportunity….the money I paid in(Whatever the generous scholarship did not cover) only provided me the opportunity to gain a meaningful education, however I may choose to define it. However, attaining that goal was also determined by whether I actually put in the time and effort to learn the material well enough so that outcome was achieved and imperfectly validated by the good grades earned in the courses taken.

The problem my TA friends, their Profs, and diligent hard working millenial classmates have with helicopter parents and their child(ren) is that the parents feel that merely paying the money entitles their child(ren) not only this availed learning opportunity, but a guarantee of good grades regardless of whether s(he) has taken the time and effort to earn those grades. That is not only aggravating for the TAs and Profs, but also ends up cheating hard working diligent classmates whose parents are not inclined to do an end-run around the academic grading and administrative processes all students are subjected to. The world does not revolve around desires of helicopter parents and their children to gain an unblemished transcript through academic extortion.

The best adage I can think of to describe my thoughts is “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink”.

it drives me nuts when baby boomers who got free state school tuition in the 1960s complain about how “materialistic” “these kids today” are for needing to get a degree that will allow them to get a job straight out of school and start paying back their loans. I graduated 15 years ago and my friends are just now sending in their final loan payments.

Not only are the baby boomers clueless when they make such criticisms, the ones dominating the establishment are the very ones who created the conditions forcing us and the milennials to get expensive degrees…..while laughing their way to the bank and the next luxurious retirement resort.

Rather, I see this phenomenon as one caused by an increasing mercenary attitude among most Americans of seeing a college degree as a product to be bought and consumed rather than a product of an experimental learning experience which could be as narrow or as expansive as the student desires.

When you’re having to take out $40,000 in college loans (on the low end) that you’re going to have to pay back over the next 10 years, you bet your sweet patootie that you’re going to look at that college degree as a commodity that you are paying good money for.

Not that it applies to exholt, but it drives me nuts when baby boomers who got free state school tuition in the 1960s complain about how “materialistic” “these kids today” are for needing to get a degree that will allow them to get a job straight out of school and start paying back their loans. I graduated 15 years ago and my friends are just now sending in their final loan payments.

I do understand what you meant and let me clarify and say I wasn’t pointing fingers at you or anyone else here. It is frustrating to hear opprobrium heaped upon one’s age cohort; that’s why I also sympathize with Christina’s comment in #63. Being of the same generation as she is, I heard a lot of the same messages and actually continue to hear them from time to time. Generations certainly don’t come out of a vacuum; they are shaped by the conditions in which they mature. Furthermore, the concept of a “generation” itself is a construct. What a “generation” means or signifies depends a lot on who is drawing the parameters and that is always to some degree arbitrary.

As an aside, it’s interesting to hear the supposed problems with the Millenial/Gen Y cohort. I’ve tended to hear quite the opposite: that the Millenials are a new Greatest Generation (or “Hero” generation in the words of Neil Strauss and William Howe) that’s going to fix everything and save the nation/world. I don’t find this generalization to be on its face any more accurate than the more negative ones.

While it may seem like generational warfare, the generational factor is actually incidental, rather than a key factor.

Rather, I see this phenomenon as one caused by an increasing mercenary attitude among most Americans of seeing a college degree as a product to be bought and consumed rather than a product of an experimental learning experience which could be as narrow or as expansive as the student desires. In so doing, many feel that if they’re going to pay a lot of money for a college degree, that they aren’t really getting their money’s worth unless jr’s transcript is flooded with as many As with maybe a few A-/B+s thrown in…regardless of whether s(he) has actually merited such good grades through his/her academic work.*

Exholt,

I agree. That’s what I was getting at in my other comment way upthread. I do think I’m seeing an attitude among some students that reflects an increasing sense of the consumerization/commodification of higher education (and there are understandable reasons for this), but I don’t think that it’s “generational” in the sense that we are using the term here. It is, as you say, incidental.