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In graduate school (doctoral program), my department - at a very prestigious university - gave a Master's degree to a guy, just to make him GO AWAY. He was a total pain in the ass - in addition to being completely incompetent - and everyone just wanted to be rid of him.  



Then he went back to India and told everyone he got a Ph.D., and tricked a family into an arranged marriage based on that lie.

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http://southparkstudios.mtvnimages.com/shared/downloads/images/season-12/1205/1205_eek-a-penis.jpg

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Do you not believe it's the job of SOMEONE at the university to socialize incoming undergraduates to the expected behavior and norms of their new role as university students?



If your answer is no, then you should have no problem with the issues described in this thread, since they are the direct result of that.



If your answer is yes, then the question becomes what is more effective (and efficient); having the university/college administration do it during freshman orientation, or ignoring it and relying on each professor trying to set expectations (that can vary wildly) for each class? To me, the answer is obviously the higher-level administration, since they ALREADY have freshman orientation for this very purpose - they often just do a piss-poor job of it.



I am not suggesting something new or different - part of the purpose of orientation has always been this socialization.  I am merely suggesting that the problems described in this thread are the direct result of administrators no longer providing the proper socialization for students during orientation.



And for the record, my wife and I have more than 30 years of combined experience working at major universities (both public and private) - as well as obviously spending a lot of time as students, for undergrad, masters and doctorate - so we do have sort of having an understanding of how universities work.



Also, let me provide an example of where I have seen this very clearly in action.  I am the academic director of several of our graduate programs, and we relatively recently started up a new program.  This is an accelerated one year Masters for students who just completed their undergrad.  We focused on designing and building the program, attracting good students, etc. - and during orientation we focused on making sure that they understood all of the technical stuff about the program (graduation requirements, coursework, GPA requirements, etc.) - but didn't really pay that much attention to socializing them in terms of expectations, behaviors and norms, because we assumed that as recently graduated students, they knew all of this.  ... and we ended up with a number of problems that the faculty had to deal with, because the kids were essentially still in an undergrad mindset, expecting people to hold their hand and solve their problems for them, and not communicating well with faculty.  It was extremely frustrating to the faculty, and for some classes, we ended up with very unhappy faculty AND very unhappy students. We realized that the problem was not actually with the students (which would have been the easy attribution) - but with us, as the administrators of the program.  We had not sufficiently clarified for them what it MEANT to be a graduate student, and how the expectations for graduate students are very different than for undergrads, and which behaviors are appropriate, and which are not.  (This is essentially the same problem as what is described in this thread - the expectations for university undergrads are different from high school students - and that needs to be clearly explained to the kids).



So the next year, we spent a lot more time being clear about that UP FRONT with them - even during recruiting and interviews - making it clear to them what we expected of them, and discouraging them from applying if they did not accept these norms and expectations.  During orientation, we spent much more time explaining these things again (I got to be the "bad cop" ) and telling them what's acceptable behavior and what's not. Most students need some structure and direction, in order to be able to learn effectively, and the problems experienced in the first year were the result of our failure to provide that.

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Exactly.



Many universities have completely dropped the ball in terms of freshman orientation - and that's what causes these sorts of problems and fucks the faculty (and the students).

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This depends on the major. Most professors I know in the sciences would be perfectly happy to not teach undergrads at all. For them teaching is only a small part of their job.

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Indoctrinate?  Like Nazis and Commies?  

What's next socialize?

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DK Prof is using what is quaintly referred to as the "archaic" meaning of the word.

You are using a somewhat more inflammatory definition.

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He's Scandanavian and Germanic. I can do that math

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Indoctrinate?  Like Nazis and Commies?  



What's next socialize?

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Universities are phobic about liability.

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probably failed a psychics test.

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I'm guessing you meant physics, not psychics.  

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I cant wait to have kids just so i can say "Man the f**k up" to my son someday.

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And reputation.

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I was talking about that earlier tonight.  That kind of stuff wasn't happening back when you could mail order a machinegun from sears.  Something about our society is sick and causing this.  

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Hahaha, sounds like my sister's stepson.  I think he's about 20-21 years old.  Thinks he's awesome but he's barely functional.  

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This is what happens when you push anyone and everyone with an IQ higher than a goldfish to go to college. You end up with a lot of people who dont have the motivation, maturity or intellectual ability to be there.



Ok well when you have to maintain a GPA of 3.5 or higher to keep your scholarship students start getting really upset with anything less than a A. Even straight Bs would cause you do loose your scholarship. And with the cost of education its understandable for them to panic. Again this problem could be solved if less people went to college....less demand for college = lower tuition rates.

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throw less federal money at it too. Federal money has been a big cause of rising tuition because the feds and banks NEVER SAY NO.

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I'm curious to hear why you think that all the .gov money hasn't distorted the economy surrounding higher education?
 

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I always found incredibly funny when the yuppies try to work on the car/truck.

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Ah, yes; the proverbial "Kill course" which is designed to weed out entire segments of students, using a right justified curve where 40%+ will get F's, 30% D's, 20% C's, 16% B's, and 4% A's.   And those are required as prerequisites for the major.  Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and others were designed for this.   Now, they (UW) did offer a "softer" version for getting your lab credit which was graded on a more traditional scale, but was also taught by TA's.