Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the
University of Maryland.
“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard
and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that
they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”
He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.
“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to
do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he
said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”
A recent study by researchers at the University of California,
Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected
B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B
for completing the required reading.
“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and
wanted to discover what was causing it” said Ellen Greenberger, the
lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students:
Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,”
which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be
related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and
family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.
Aaron M. Brower, the vice provost for teaching and learning at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, offered another theory.
“I think that it stems from their K-12 experiences,” Professor
Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test preparation. And
this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get
high scores.”
James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at
Vanderbilt University,
said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of
work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve
a high grade.’ “
In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s
test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if
they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should
be taken into account in their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.
“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr.
Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put
in?”
“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the
point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every
chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and
more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If
your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then
something is wrong.”
Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the
University of Vermont,
agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend
class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a
B.”
At Vanderbilt, there is an emphasis on what Dean Hogge calls “the
locus of control.” The goal is to put the academic burden on the
student.
“Instead of getting an A, they make an A,” he said. “Similarly, if
they make a lesser grade, it is not the teacher’s fault. Attributing
the outcome of a failure to someone else is a common problem.”
Additionally, Dean Hogge said, “professors often try to outline the
‘rules of the game’ in their syllabi,” in an effort to curb haggling
over grades.
Professor Brower said professors at Wisconsin emphasized that
students must “read for knowledge and write with the goal of exploring
ideas.”
This informal mission statement, along with special seminars for
freshmen, is intended to help “re-teach students about what education
is.”
The seminars are integrated into introductory courses. Examples
include the conventional, like a global-warming seminar, and the more
obscure, like physics in religion.
The seminars “are meant to help students think differently about
their classes and connect them to real life,” Professor Brower said.
He said that if students developed a genuine interest in their
field, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and intrinsically
motivated learning could take place.
“College students want to be part of a different and better world,
but they don’t know how,” he said. “Unless teachers are very
intentional with our goals, we play into the system in place.”
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