SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Entitled disengagement

The latest addition to our lending library is Lowering Higher Education: The rise of corporate universities and the fall of liberal education. The authors are professors at the University of Western Ontario. Basically, they are  chronicling the modern trend towards the de-emphasis of liberal arts and science education in universities in favour of credentialism and job training. They examine the corporatization of universities within the context of a range of contenious issues in higher education, from lowered standards and inflated grades to the overall decline of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences instruction. The excerpt (pp. 91-93) outlines the scope of the problem, and then zeroes in on the very new phenomenon of students who feel entitled but who are disengaged from the learning process.

"In broad strokes, this crisis is unfolding as follows: Government policies promoting mass access to universities have addressed the supply side of labour, rather than the demand side of creating more jobs. Consequently, there is an oversupply of university graduates in relation to the demand for them. In conjunction with a decline in funding, universities have attempted to survive by embracing corporate management principles, and these measures, in turn, have helped to create the credentialist approach to universities on the part of both students who are seeking job opportunities and courses of study that are hungry for recruits. In the past two decades, universities have seen an influx of students whose primary purpose for being there is to receive a credential, and they have a less than keen interest in the courses they must take to get that credential. In turn, classrooms have been affected by a culture of disengagement as more students assume the mindset of entitled disengagement: they have paid for their credential and assume that the product will be delivered to their satisfaction. As this culture has taken hold, professors who are sensitive to these changes have reacted in a number of adverse ways that do not bode well for the future of the profession."

.....

"Many students have a rough time when they attend university. There is ample empirical evidence of increasing stress levels (especially for female students, who now predominate by a ratio approaching 60/40). There is also widespread alientation. The alienation discussed above in chapter 2 is manifested in numerous ways, from a detachment from the (daily process of learning, to a disdain for the product of learning (the outcomes). The detachment from learning shows up in the disengagement statistics, but can be experienced as an inability to 'be in the moment' and experience university-level learning as an intrinsically gratifying experience that produces a sense of fulfilment. And, alientation can be stressful: being forced to enter or remain in alienating situations can simply compound that stress.

"The disdain that many students develop for the product of learning is discernible in the mindset of entitled disengagement."