“If you think corruption in elite US college admissions is bad, what happens once those students are in the classroom is even worse,” wrote an anonymous professor in the Guardian this week.

What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them | Anonymous Read more

The professor argued that beyond the shocking lengths parents will go to get their children into top schools, the influx of unskilled and entitled students is ruining the college experience itself: monopolizing faculty time and creating a palpable strain on the system. “The presence of unqualified students admitted through corrupt practices is an unmitigated disaster for education and research,” they wrote. “Students who can’t get into elite schools through the front door based on academic merit don’t change once they’re in class. They can’t do the work, and are generally uninterested in gaining the skills they need in order to do well.”

The piece sparked a wave of responses from readers, many of them professors in the US and around the world. With permission we have published a selection, which have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Kevin McLin

University professor, San Francisco

I have never taught at an elite university, but I have taught at several state schools. Many, perhaps most, of these students are also unprepared for college. They lack the academic skills that students should learn in high school, and in some cases, middle school. This is because our public schools are no longer doing the job they are supposed to do.

Additionally, we are trying to cram more students through college despite our lack of financial support for the K12 and public higher-ed system. We simply are not educating a huge number of Americans. This has been going on for generations. It’s nothing new and probably started in the late 80s or early 90s. It has become worse over time, though there are large variations from state to state. That is the real untold story. Focusing on the elite schools seems more like a distraction.

Anonymous

Education administrator, United Kingdom

I studied at undergraduate and postgraduate level at a UK institution and subsequently joined the university as an administrator over a decade ago.

The experiences of the academic writing are representative of issues across the sector and are not solely limited to unqualified students. Despite having increased the academic requirements for places on courses, a faculty within our university has recently restructured their first year of teaching to focus on helping students develop skills to enable them to study at undergraduate level, as new students seem woefully underprepared to pursue independent study. The academic blames the target-setting at secondary-level education, suggesting that students are taught to “parrot and regurgitate” the set syllabus in order to pass exams rather than receiving an education that values critical discussion and independent thought.

This is exacerbated by a growing feeling amongst students that they are entitled to a 2:1 degree as they have paid fees, rather than as a result of their academic performance. In the end, standards drop, educational quality declines and all parties involved feel incredibly frustrated.

Stephanie Newell

Professor of English, New Haven, Connecticut

I work at Yale – one of the universities affected by the bribery/corruption scandal – so I read this article with interest.

I found “Anonymous’s” complaints about losing his/her precious research time to needy students who are not able to keep up with the rigorous demands of an elite American university to be disingenuous. At these elite American universities, we are given huge salaries, generous research budgets, and plenty of time for research, including four months per year when we are not teaching at all. If Anonymous is in a humanities/social science discipline, he/she will teach approximately two courses per week, amounting to a maximum of five contact hours per week in the classroom with students.

Given his/her vast salary, amazing work conditions, and minimal classroom time with students, I would like to suggest that he/she should expect to spend considerable one-on-one time with individual students, whether they are struggling or not. Furthermore, those who are struggling are not necessarily those who have bribed their way into the system. The numbers of bribers are very low among the numbers of students who wish to seek professors’ input to improve their performance.

William DuMouchel

Chief statistical scientist, Oracle Health Sciences, Miami

I’ve taught at UC Berkeley, U Michigan, University College London, MIT and Columbia University. I’ve always found almost all of my students smart and fun to teach and well prepared. So my experience has been nothing like what your anonymous author relates.

I do teach a Stem subject, so maybe that scares away most of the spoiled rich kids. Why would wealthy parents pay big bucks just to have their child flunk out of tough engineering, science and math courses?

And things may have changed over time. I’m at a hi-tech software company now. I last taught university in the 1990s and then to all grad students; my last undergrad teaching was in the 1970s. But, to repeat, that article didn’t accord at all with my experiences during the 25 years I’ve taught in elite universities.

Anonymous

College professor, Dallas

I’m writing to raise an issue that I hope will get more attention as the coverage of the admissions scandal evolves.

I have been a college professor and a parent since the mid-1990s. When I began teaching at the college level, I cannot recall a single student notifying me that he/she was entitled to time-and-a-half on tests. Sometime after the year 2000, I started to have students provide paperwork indicating that they were entitled to time-and-a-half. The number continued to rise.

What is happening is that around age 16, some of the very smart and average students are suddenly getting themselves tested for learning disabilities and are then granted time-and-a-half on the SAT and ACT. I looked into it a bit and discovered that their parents pay a psychologist to diagnose their children. The cost is about $3,000. Who suffers are honest students who do not cheat the system and poor students who cannot afford the $3,000 to be diagnosed with a pretend condition.

I personally think this time-and-a-half is a much bigger scandal than the few celebrities giving bribes. It affects far more students.

Anonymous

University lecturer, Mexico City

As a lecturer in a large publicly funded federal university in Mexico City, although our entrance process is via a competitive exam (mostly multiple choice – that is another discussion) our students are from a socio-economic background far removed from that of your students.

I start the course with a reminder that the degree that they hope to obtain isn’t for them, but for society as a whole – ie the degree given by the university is an indication that they have the skills that are needed for the corresponding profession. Therefore even if I wanted to pass the whole group just so that I wouldn’t have to teach them again, I can’t – because I and the university have a wider duty. Would you like to be operated on by a surgeon whose degree was given out of pity or avarice on the part of the lecturers or the university?

I find the students accept the argument (at least to my face).

Bryan McCann

Department of History chair, Georgetown University

The anonymous article is an embarrassment. Given the admissions scandal of the last two weeks, this is hardly a provocative or dangerous opinion. It represents something very close to the mainstream opinion on what happens in elite colleges. Why publish it anonymously? You could find 10 professors to say essentially the same thing on the record. As an anonymous piece it has zero journalistic value.

In my view, it also represents a highly biased and implausible account. Is this faculty member honestly putting in 12 hours a week providing extra help for entitled students who did not deserve to get in? As a department chair, I find the claim highly dubious.

The article is ostensibly written by a tenured faculty member. No sector of the American workforce has stronger guarantees against retaliation for exercising free speech.

I encourage the Guardian to avoid anonymous publication except in cases where retaliation is highly plausible. This does not come close to meeting the test.

Our writer’s response to these comments

Thank you to everyone who read the article and commented. I’m struck by the commonalties of experience among those who identify as faculty members at US universities. Particularly heartbreaking are the responses noting the overall decline in academic preparedness of US high school graduates. I agree wholeheartedly that the elite college admissions scandal is downstream of a much bigger problem, which is the failure of American education at the pre-college level. This is worrisome in a political climate of deception and manipulation where Americans urgently need critical thinking skills.

It was simultaneously interesting and dispiriting to read that similar patterns are unfolding in other countries. The commenter identifying as an administrator at a UK university could have been describing many of the young people I encounter when s/he wrote of students who are being “taught to ‘parrot and regurgitate’” and that – once in university – they believe themselves entitled to top marks because they have purchased them with entrance fees.

As for the comments alluding to my “vast” and “huge” salary, I must confess that I laughed aloud. For the record: most of my students graduate to entry-level jobs in finance or consulting that pay them more than my annual salary.

The multiple commenters who noted that a university education is increasingly being sold as a consumer good are undoubtedly correct, but that does not explain the dramatic decline in skills that I and others are seeing among our students. Something is going wrong long before students get the message that they are “customers” to be waited upon by faculty servers.

What’s problematic is the way unqualified students diminish the quality of education for others by taking up far more than their fair share of faculty time, both within and outside the classroom. The vast majority of commenters not only understood that, but seemed to have had similar experiences.

Finally, a response to the person who attacked the Guardian for publishing the article anonymously, on the grounds that “no sector of the American workforce has stronger guarantees against retaliation for exercising free speech”. The issue of academics facing retribution for free speech has been covered extensively in publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, the Washington Post and CNN.

Over decades of publishing, this piece is the first thing I have ever felt necessary to publish anonymously. I hope it is the last.