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1 [1] 2 Scriptorium Philosophia 3 4 [2]Scriptorium Philosophia 5 6 SubscribeSign in 7 8 Share this post 9 10 [8] 11 [https] 12 Scriptorium Philosophia 13 Scriptorium Philosophia 14 The average college student today 15 Copy link 16 Facebook 17 Email 18 Notes 19 More 20 21 The average college student today 22 23 How things have changed 24 25 [9] 26 [htt] 27 [10]Hilarius Bookbinder 28 Mar 25, 2025 29 3,535 30 31 Share this post 32 33 [12] 34 [https] 35 Scriptorium Philosophia 36 Scriptorium Philosophia 37 The average college student today 38 Copy link 39 Facebook 40 Email 41 Notes 42 More 43 [13] 44 786 45 653 46 [14] 47 Share 48 49 I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor 50 for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been awhile 51 since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what 52 they used to be. The problem with even talking about this topic at all is the 53 knee-jerk response of, “yeah, just another old man complaining about the kids 54 today, the same way everyone has since Gilgamesh. Shake your fist at the 55 clouds, dude.”[15]1 So yes, I’m ready to hear that. Go right ahead. Because 56 people need to know. 57 58 First, some context. I teach at a regional public university in the US. Our 59 students are average on just about any dimension you care to name—aspirations, 60 intellect, socio-economic status, physical fitness. They wear hoodies and yoga 61 pants and like Buffalo wings. They listen to Zach Bryan and Taylor Swift. 62 That’s in no way a put-down: I firmly believe that the average citizen deserves 63 a shot at a good education and even more importantly a shot at a good life. All 64 I mean is that our students are representative; they’re neither the bottom of 65 the academic barrel nor the cream off the top. 66 67 As with every college we get a range of students, and our best philosophy 68 majors have gone on to earn PhDs or go to law school. We’re also an NCAA 69 Division 2 school and I watched one of our graduates become an All-Pro lineman 70 for the Saints. These are exceptions, and what I say here does not apply to 71 every single student. But what I’m about to describe are the average students 72 at Average State U. 73 74 Scriptorium Philosophia is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts 75 and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 76 77 [26][ ] 78 Subscribe 79 Reading 80 81 Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By 82 “functionally illiterate” I mean “unable to read and comprehend adult novels by 83 people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.” I picked 84 those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an 85 objective standard of “serious adult novel.” Furthermore, I’ve read them all 86 and can testify that they are brilliant, captivating writers; we’re not talking 87 about Finnegans Wake here. But at the same time they aren’t YA, romantasy, or 88 Harry Potter either. 89 90 I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or 91 whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult 92 novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. 93 They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read,[29]2 94 and most certainly not the attention span to finish. For them to sit down and 95 try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron 96 Man triathlon: much suffering with zero chance of success. 97 98 Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound 99 out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get 100 through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the 101 words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online 102 HR training. Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn't even 103 take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu 104 is a chore and to be avoided. 105 106 [30] 107 [https] 108 The Buffalo wings look good 109 110 They also lie about it. I wrote the textbook for a course I regularly teach. 111 It’s a fairly popular textbook, so I’m assuming it is not terribly written. I 112 did everything I could to make the writing lively and packed with my most 113 engaging examples. The majority of students don’t read it. Oh, they will come 114 to my office hours (occasionally) because they are bombing the course, and tell 115 me that they have been doing the reading, but it’s obvious they are lying. The 116 most charitable interpretation is that they looked at some of the words, didn’t 117 understand anything, pretended that counted as reading, and returned to looking 118 at TikTok. 119 120 This [31]study says that 65% of college students reported that they skipped 121 buying or renting a textbook because of cost. I believe they didn’t buy the 122 books, but I’m skeptical that cost is the true reason, as opposed to just the 123 excuse they offer. Yes, I know some texts, especially in the sciences, are 124 expensive. However, the books I assign are low-priced. All texts combined for 125 one of my courses is between $35-$100 and they still don’t buy them. Why buy 126 what you aren’t going to read anyway? Just google it. 127 128 Even in upper-division courses that students supposedly take out of genuine 129 interest they won’t read. I’m teaching Existentialism this semester. It is 130 entirely primary texts—Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre. The 131 reading ranges from accessible but challenging to extremely difficult but we’re 132 making a go of it anyway (looking at you, Being and Nothingness). This is a 133 close textual analysis course. My students come to class without the books, 134 which they probably do not own and definitely did not read. 135 136 Writing 137 138 Their writing skills are at the 8th-grade level. Spelling is atrocious, grammar 139 is random, and the correct use of apostrophes is cause for celebration. Worse 140 is the resistance to original thought. What I mean is the reflexive submission 141 of the cheapest cliché as novel insight. 142 143 Exam question: Describe the attitude of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man 144 towards acting in one’s own self-interest, and how this is connected to his 145 concerns about free will. Are his views self-contradictory? 146 147 Student: With the UGM its all about our journey in life, not the 148 destination. He beleives we need to take time to enjoy the little things 149 becuase life is short and you never gonna know what happens. Sometimes he 150 contradicts himself cause sometimes you say one thing but then you think 151 something else later. It’s all relative. 152 153 You probably think that’s satire. Either that, or it looks like this: 154 155 Exam question: Describe the attitude of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man 156 towards acting in one’s own self-interest, and how this is connected to his 157 concerns about free will. Are his views self-contradictory? 158 159 Student: Dostoevsky’s Underground Man paradoxically rejects the idea that 160 people always act in their own self-interest, arguing instead that humans 161 often behave irrationally to assert their free will. He criticizes 162 rationalist philosophies like utilitarianism, which he sees as reducing 163 individuals to predictable mechanisms, and insists that people may choose 164 suffering just to prove their autonomy. However, his stance is 165 self-contradictory—while he champions free will, he is paralyzed by 166 inaction and self-loathing, trapped in a cycle of bitterness. Through this, 167 Dostoevsky explores the tension between reason, free will, and 168 self-interest, exposing the complexities of human motivation. 169 170 That’s right, ChatGPT. The students cheat. I’ve written about cheating in “[33] 171 Why AI is Destroying Academic Integrity,” so I won’t repeat it here, but the 172 cheating tsunami has definitely changed what assignments I give. I can’t assign 173 papers any more because I’ll just get AI back, and there’s nothing I can do to 174 make it stop. Sadly, not writing exacerbates their illiteracy; writing is a 175 muscle and dedicated writing is a workout for the mind as well as the pen. 176 177 Arithmetic 178 179 I’m less informed to speak out on this one, but my math prof friends tell me 180 that their students are increasingly less capable and less willing to put in 181 the effort. As a result they have had to make their tests easier with fewer 182 hard problems. When I was a first semester freshman (at a private SLAC, yes, 183 but it wasn’t CalTech) I took Calculus 1. Second semester I took Calculus 2. I 184 don’t think pre-calculus was even a thing back then. Now apparently pre-calc 185 counts as an advanced content course. My psych prof friends who teach 186 statistics have similarly lamented having to water down the content over time. 187 188 Symbolic Logic was a requirement when I was a grad student. The course was a 189 cross-listed upper-division undergrad/grad class. Jaegwon Kim taught the 190 course, and our sole textbook was W. V. Quine’s Methods of Logic, which we 191 worked through in its entirety. I think we spent two weeks on propositional 192 logic before moving on to the predicate calculus. We proved compactness, 193 soundness, and completeness, and probably some other theorems I forget. There 194 is no possible way our students, unless they were math or computer science 195 majors, would survive that class. 196 197 What’s changed? 198 199 The average student has seen college as basically transactional for as long as 200 I’ve been doing this. They go through the motions and maybe learn something 201 along the way, but it is all in service to the only conception of the good life 202 they can imagine: a job with middle-class wages. I’ve mostly made my peace with 203 that, do my best to give them a taste of the life of the mind, and celebrate 204 the successes. 205 206 Things have changed. Ted Gioia [36]describes modern students as checked-out, 207 phone-addicted zombies. Troy Jollimore [37]writes, “I once believed my students 208 and I were in this together, engaged in a shared intellectual pursuit. That 209 faith has been obliterated over the past few semesters.” Faculty have seen a 210 [38]stunning level of disconnection. 211 212 [49][ ] 213 Subscribe 214 What has changed exactly? 215 216 • Chronic absenteeism. As a friend in Sociology put it, “Attendance is a HUGE 217 problem—many just treat class as optional.” Last semester across all 218 sections, my average student missed two weeks of class. Actually it was 219 more than that, since I’m not counting excused absences or students who 220 eventually withdrew. A friend in Mathematics told me, “Students are less 221 respectful of the university experience —attendance, lateness, e-mails to 222 me about nonsense, less sense of responsibility.” 223 224 • Disappearing students. Students routinely just vanish at some point during 225 the semester. They don’t officially drop or withdraw from the course, they 226 simply quit coming. No email, no notification to anyone in authority about 227 some problem. They just pull an Amelia Earhart. It’s gotten to the point 228 that on the first day of class, especially in lower-division, I tell the 229 students, “look to your right. Now look to your left. One of you will be 230 gone by the end of the semester. Don’t let it be you.” 231 232 • They can’t sit in a seat for 50 minutes. Students routinely get up during a 233 50 minute class, sometimes just 15 minutes in, and leave the classroom. I’m 234 supposed to believe that they suddenly, urgently need the toilet, but the 235 reality is that they are going to look at their phones. They know I’ll call 236 them out on it in class, so instead they walk out. I’ve even told them to 237 plan ahead and pee before class, like you tell a small child before a road 238 trip, but it has no effect. They can’t make it an hour without getting 239 their phone fix. 240 241 • They want me to do their work for them. During the Covid lockdown, faculty 242 bent over backwards in every way we knew how to accommodate students during 243 an unprecedented (in our lifetimes) health crisis. Now students expect that 244 as a matter of routine. I am frequently asked for my PowerPoint slides, 245 which basically function for me as lecture notes. It is unimaginable to me 246 that I would have ever asked one of my professors for their own lecture 247 notes. No, you can’t have my slides. Get the notes from a classmate. Read 248 the book. Come to office hours for a conversation if you are still confused 249 after the preceding steps. Last week I had an email from a student who 250 essentially asked me to recap an entire week’s worth of lecture material 251 for him prior to yesterday’s midterm. No, I’m not doing that. I’m not 252 writing you a 3000-word email. Try coming to class. 253 254 • Pretending to type notes in their laptops. I hate laptops in class, but if 255 I try to ban them the students will just run to Accommodative Services and 256 get them to tell me that the student must use a laptop or they will explode 257 into tiny pieces. But I know for a fact that note-taking is at best a small 258 part of what they are doing. Last semester I had a good student tell me, 259 “hey you know that kid who sits in front of me with the laptop? Yeah, I 260 thought you should know that all he does in class is gamble on his 261 computer.” Gambling, looking at the socials, whatever, they are not 262 listening to me or participating in discussion. They are staring at a 263 screen. 264 265 • Indifference. Like everyone else, I allow students to make up missed work 266 if they have an excused absence. No, you can’t make up the midterm because 267 you were hungover and slept through your alarm, but you can if you had 268 Covid. Then they just don’t show up. A missed quiz from a month ago might 269 as well have happened in the Stone Age; students can’t be bothered to make 270 it up or even talk to me about it because they just don’t care. 271 272 • [51]It’s the phones, stupid. They are absolutely addicted to their phones. 273 When I go work out at the Campus Rec Center, easily half of the students 274 there are just sitting on the machines scrolling on their phones. I was 275 talking with a retired faculty member at the Rec this morning who works out 276 all the time. He said he has done six sets waiting for a student to put 277 down their phone and get off the machine he wanted. The students can’t get 278 off their phones for an hour to do a voluntary activity they chose for fun. 279 Sometimes I’m amazed they ever leave their [52]goon caves at all. 280 281 I don’t blame K-12 teachers. This is not an educational system problem, this is 282 a societal problem. What am I supposed to do? Keep standards high and fail them 283 all? That’s not an option for untenured faculty who would like to keep their 284 jobs. I’m a tenured full professor. I could probably get away with that for a 285 while, but sooner or later the Dean’s going to bring me in for a sit-down. 286 Plus, if we flunk out half the student body and drive the university into 287 bankruptcy, all we’re doing is depriving the good students of an education. 288 289 We’re told to meet the students where they are, flip the classroom, use 290 multimedia, just be more entertaining, get better. As if rearranging the deck 291 chairs just the right way will stop the Titanic from going down. As if it is 292 somehow the fault of the faculty. It’s not our fault. We’re doing the best we 293 can with what we’ve been given. 294 295 All this might sound like an angry rant. I’m not sure. I’m not angry, though, 296 not at all. I’m just sad. One thing all faculty have to learn is that the 297 students are not us. We can’t expect them all to burn with the sacred fire we 298 have for our disciplines, to see philosophy, psychology, math, physics, 299 sociology or economics as the divine light of reason in a world of shadow. Our 300 job is to kindle that flame, and we’re trying to get that spark to catch, but 301 it is getting harder and harder and we don’t know what to do. 302 303 Thanks for reading Scriptorium Philosophia! This post is public so feel free to 304 share it. 305 306 [53]Share 307 308 [54]1 309 310 Careful about [55]bogus “ancient” quotations on this topic, though. 311 312 [56]2 313 314 Students often ask me the meaning of common words on exams, words like 315 “caricature.” 316 317 3,535 318 319 Share this post 320 321 [58] 322 [https] 323 Scriptorium Philosophia 324 Scriptorium Philosophia 325 The average college student today 326 Copy link 327 Facebook 328 Email 329 Notes 330 More 331 [59] 332 786 333 653 334 [60] 335 Share 336 337 Discussion about this post 338 339 CommentsRestacks 340 [ht] 341 [ ] 342 [ ] 343 [ ] 344 [ ] 345 [64] 346 [ht] 347 [65]Matthew Lewis 348 [66]6d 349 Liked by Hilarius Bookbinder 350 351 I was a nontraditional student who went to law school at 33. It wasn't much 352 better there. 353 354 I ended up graduating in the top 5% of my class. During the three year ride, 355 peers would ask how to get their GPA up. I only had a three step strategy: (1) 356 do all of the reading for each class the day before class or earlier; (2) in 357 class, take notes by hand without any devices nearby; and (3) outline the 358 course material before the (usually comprehensive) final exam. No one ever 359 mentioned following that advice but more than a few of the people I told that 360 to would ask me for my outlines at the end of the semester. 361 362 The scary thing for me was that I found myself explaining basic concepts we 363 learned in 1L--such as the three categories of torts--to peers who would be 364 graduating (two years later). They just could not retain the material. These 365 are practicing attorneys who I still sometimes field basic questions from. 366 367 I blame the K-12 system. Grade inflation and No Child Left Behind have resulted 368 in grades from American public schools being essentially worthless as a 369 representation of their academic ability. Parents know they can just throw a 370 fit if their child is ever on the cusp of being held back or even getting a 371 failing grade. 372 373 There is a much bigger societal issue under the surface, for sure. We're all 374 slaves to our addictions now. Work and school are things people do to 375 facilitate their video games, cell phone scrolling, gambling, etc. I don't know 376 how you teach discipline and restraint to people who have spent their entire 377 lives in the crosshairs of a legion of software developers who want to 378 weaponize our reward systems for a small increase in engagement. 379 380 Expand full comment 381 Reply 382 Share 383 [69]32 replies 384 [70] 385 [ht] 386 [71]Alexander j Pasha 387 [72]6d 388 Liked by Hilarius Bookbinder 389 390 This intellectual regression is politically very frightening, what happens to 391 already eroding freedoms when illiterate addicts form a plurality of the 392 public? 393 394 Expand full comment 395 Reply 396 Share 397 [75]27 replies 398 [76]784 more comments... 399 TopLatestDiscussions 400 401 No posts 402 403 Ready for more? 404 405 [91][ ] 406 Subscribe 407 © 2025 Hilarius Bookbinder 408 [93]Privacy ∙ [94]Terms ∙ [95]Collection notice 409 [96] Start Writing[97]Get the app 410 [98]Substack is the home for great culture 411 412 Share 413 414 Copy link 415 Facebook 416 Email 417 Notes 418 More 419 This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. 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