AWOL Students and Signals
Reflection and a Response
Both because it relates so much to my own experiences and those often discussed with colleagues, and because it chimes with a theme I have discussed before, this article caught my eye.
Written by a current Harvard student, the author documents how his time spent on study has fallen compared to earlier in his course and compared to previous generations. The author blames this on several things:
Grade inflation
If you expect to do well in an assignment without putting in maximum effort to do all the reading and be well-prepared, there is less incentive to put the effort in.
The desire to engage in a range of extracurricular activities that will enhance the profile of the student ready for the jobs market, which in turn leaves less time for study.
A ‘utilitarian’ approach to academic study, where students are very focused on the work that is directly needed to do well in assessments, to the detriment of broader intellectual exploration. This in turn may have been fostered by the competitive process needed to get to Harvard in the first place, and so is deeply ingrained in the current students.
The author finishes by expressing regret about how they have conducted their degree, wishing they could start again with more focus on the academic side of things.
A first point to make is that there are some empirical claims in this article that are backed by fairly flimsy evidence. Anecdotes about how things were in the ‘olden days’ can often give a false impression, and even our own memories and reflections can create a false narrative of the past after only a short gap in time. Nonetheless let’s proceed under the assumption that some of this is true, for at least some students.
One of the reasons this article interested me so much was that it feels like an accurate description of most of my own students (and it is rather reassuring that this picture seems true at Harvard as well as traditionally less prestigious institutions!)
Just earlier this week I recorded a video telling my students to be studying 30-40 hours a week and treat study like a fulltime job. I know this is unlikely, but seeing an average of fifteen hours, if true, would be probably closer to reality for my students, but disheartening nonetheless.
Students being strategic around assessments and their effort also feels very familiar, I have had many students who I have seen very little of through a course, but they manage to produce good work anyway. Similarly whilst there are students who do not seem to do much of anything, there are others who seem amazingly busy with work, clubs, doing assignments, volunteering, but little wider academic work. Whether this has changed much over time I cannot say, but this picture rings true for many students of mine.
Although the article does not use the phrase, all of the behaviour discussed in it is to do with signalling. This is the process of trying to prove your ability by acquiring qualifications and experiences in order to secure better employment and opportunity in the future. It is something that is integral to what we do in academia, arguably it is the main function of what we do, and it is one I have written about before.
As the author of the Harvard article rightly identifies the trends he analyses are all interlinked. If there was a wider range of grades from a university course, then this would be the primary focus of student efforts to develop a signal. Because grades are compressed at the upper end (and I suspect in the UK it is even worse than in the US1), students need another way to distinguish themselves and so put much extra effort into extra-curricular activities. To even get to a leading university in the first place also required signalling in the same way, with grades not doing much to help at the upper end, and so a culture grows up throughout young people’s lives that values a range of activities away from pure academic enquiry.
What is the solution to this? Because of the cultural change the author is sceptical that a reduction in grade inflation would help. I would be more positive, but it would need to be true at lower levels of education as well as in HE. A truly broad range of marks with only a small percentage of students in each category would provide a more accurate signal, and increase the incentive to put effort into moving up a category. This would have to be combined with intelligent assessment that accurately tested student competencies (easier said than done). Whether this is possible due to the incentives of those involved in the sector, or whether it is relevant with changes in AI that will radically change what we are doing in education is too big a question for this essay.
More immediately relevant is whether this is something that even requires a solution? The author implies that they should have been more academically enquiring but is this right?
But those commitments should spring from an intrinsic desire, not from a desire to appeal to a potential employer
There is a moralisation here about academic enquiry as a noble pursuit that serves a purpose above simple worldly concerns. Some philosophers (such as Plato) may agree with this, but for most people that practical work of getting a decent job, earning some money and having financial security are more important. As in my earlier linked article, there is a trend for people to disparage the business of signalling as not what education should be about. I certainly agree that the stories like the one in this article are a concern, not because of some misplaced utopian thinking about education, but because of the wasted resources to society. Whilst we have the system in place that we do, students have a little choice but to respond to the incentives in front of them and we should not be surprised when they react accordingly, and nor should the students be upset with themselves. If we are to change it we may all have some role to play.
Maybe in the end the author is simply not the type of person he thinks he is. He would like to be the endlessly curious philosopher-guardian, but in the end he has more mundane interests, he should learn to accept this rather than regretting the past, and get on with the real world business that almost everyone else has to worry about.
“In 2010-11, 15.5 per cent of students were awarded a first class honours degree. The proportion of students awarded the top grade has since more than doubled, reaching 32.8 per cent of students in 2021-22.” Source: Office of Students