“Be honest,” I said to a friend of mine over dinner a few days ago. “How bad is it?”
My friend is a professor at one of the most famous and respected universities in the world, and what I wanted to know was, are college campuses really filled with neurotic, brittle students and psychotic, Maoist professors, or is that just the impression a reasonable person gets from reading the newspaper?
I used more diplomatic language, of course, but that’s what I wanted to know. For the past few years, it’s been hard to find any portrayal of a modern college campus that didn’t resemble a luxurious hot-house for the mentally and emotionally unstable. We’ve all read the articles about “trigger words” and “exam accommodations” and “mental health excuses” and all sorts of things that, to use my old man tone of voice, we didn’t have back when I was in college.
Every few weeks a story bubbles up through social media about recent college graduates being unable to function in the workplace or a survey that shows how intellectually unprepared college students are for things like basic math, elementary writing skills, and the key principles of American citizenship. We tend to blame the kids — well, I tend to blame them because I am old and cranky and falling apart physically and therefore deeply envious — but it’s not like they’re going to learn any of those things in college. And they certainly don’t learn them before college.
By my informal investigations, it’s pretty clear that an American high school education is mostly focused on reminding students that all of America is built on stolen land and that you’re probably not the gender you think you are. And when those angry and confused students show up at college, all of that nonsense is amplified and extended with a lot of complicated jargon which many of us have heard flung across the holiday dinner table.
But what I wanted to know from my friend was, is college still a nuthouse or has the toxic cloud receded somewhat?
His answer was immensely cheering. “It’s a lot better,” he said. “The students I have are smart and reflective and not at all like the mobs we’ve seen on cable news.”
In fact, he told me, on the first day of class this semester, he passed around a sign-in sheet and asked for their names and email addresses and, he added with emphatic sincerity, their preferred pronouns. “I want everyone to be comfortable in this class,” he told me he said. “And I want us all to be able to bring our complete selves to the discussions.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You’ll be happy to know,” he said, “that they rolled their eyes, too. I felt like an idiot. I felt like an old hippie from another era trying to use mod language to connect with the kids.”
This is just one anecdote, admittedly. A snapshot of one class at one university on one day. Still, it’s a pretty upbeat indication.
“They just don’t seem to care that much about the things we’ve been told they care about,” he told me. “Mostly they just want to know what they need to learn in order to get a job.”
They’re scared, in other words. Scared of a future that’s going to be rougher, financially anyway, than the past — which is a new concept for Americans. They read the same social media posts we do. They know that employers are dissatisfied with what’s showing up for the first day on the job. They know that inflation may eat away at their paycheck. They know that the Chinese who live in China, just like the Chinese Americans who sit next to them in class, are probably studying harder and preparing themselves more rigorously for whatever comes next in the world.
“Wow,” I said when my professor friend wound up his assessment of the State of the University Student. “I guess fear of the future is a good way to motivate yourself to get an ‘A’ in a class.”
“Well, they’re all going to get an ‘A’ anyway,” he said. “Grade inflation is still very much a thing.”
So, modified limited good news from America’s college campuses. They’re still coddled, apparently, but a lot less annoying. And that’s enough to be thankful for.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
