CLASS OF 2010 IS ‘NUMEROUS AND DEPRESSINGLY SIMILAR’, HE CLAIMS
A university professor has suggested that today’s graduates leave university without the ability to think.
The claim appeared in an article by Tim Birkhead, professor of behavioural ecology at the University of Sheffield, in this week’s Times Higher Education.
Graduate Fog thinks that university professors should think twice about insulting their former students – especially when it’s you lot who pay their salaries with your tuition fees.
In the piece, Birkhead likened graduates to, er, baby squid:
“When conditions are good, reasonable numbers may survive, but with a sudden downturn in environmental conditions only those offspring with the right combination of traits will make it.”
…before appearing to insult the modern graduate by claiming s/he is not unlike a German boy who grew up in isolation in a darkened cell in the 1800s:
“On graduating, the average student is rather like Kaspar Hauser on his first day on the streets, still needing to be taught how to think.”
Still, there was some consolation.
Birkhead went on to offer his own insightful tips for graduate career success in a recession:
“What do you need to survive and gain meaningful employment? The answer is: something different. In a world where graduates are both numerous and depressingly similar (ie with an upper second class degree), you need something to make you stand out.”
Brilliant! Something to make you ‘stand out’! Why didn’t WE think of that?
(What did he have in mind? Let us guess… An unpaid internship, perhaps?).
Although Birkhead later questioned whether universities’ teaching methods needed updating (er, yes?), he initially seemed happy to blame everybody but the universities for this apparent failure to equip you with the razor-sharp thinking and ability to ‘stand out’ that you need in order to land a graduate job in 2010.
He wrote:
“Despite their best efforts, universities have struggled to help students stand out, constrained, first by sheer weight of numbers, second by a pre-university experience that does little more than train pupils to pass examinations, and third, by a culture where no student fails, and in which every university, department, academic and school teacher is micro-assessed to make sure no-one fails.”
Here, the author’s ‘poor me’ language started to wind me up.
(“Despite their best efforts”, “struggled to help”, “constrained”…)
I’m not a fan of victim culture, but I do think that if anyone is the ‘victim’ here, it’s you lot – the graduates, his customers – who are leaving university £23k in debt and without any sign of the promised ‘leg-up’ in the job market you were led to believe that a degree would buy you.
(New stats out today show that 55% of undergraduates are worried about failing to find work after graduation. That’s hardly a vote of confidence for their universities, is it?)
I’m also irritated by Birkhead’s readiness to blame everybody around him, for making it so difficult for him and his colleagues to provide the sort of quality, rigorous training he says they used to.
First it’s your fault, for turning up in such big numbers.
Next, it’s your school’s fault, for teaching you to pass exams.
And finally, it’s the creation of a general ‘culture’ where excellence has been replaced by mediocrity. (Er, whose fault is that then?)
I’m not a university lecturer. Perhaps Birkbeck has a point – perhaps he doesn’t.
But if these universities are still quite happy to take your money, I think their staff should stop moaning about how tough their job is – and stop making excuses for their failure to equip you with the skills employers really want.
(If this is even true. Personally, I feel businesses should be taking their share of the responsibility for training you – rather than expecting you to arrive at their door, pre-trained for them, either by your uni or by yourself, through doing unpaid internships.).
Asking us all to feel sympathy for the academics’ plight is, in my opinion, a bit rich.
If the skills, ‘critical thinking’ or whatever he wants to call them that graduates leave university with do not match those that employers want, it is at least partly the responsibility of universities to wise up and modernise their approach.
And they need to do this fast.
Chop-chop people, it’s 2010.
(Historically, this tribe has not moved fast. It’s taken universities more than ten years to realise that the internet is kind of a big deal. Depressingly, a new survey by Transversal showed nearly half (47%) of students rated their university’s website as ‘poor’ or ‘average’.)
In my opinion, Birkhead whining that things aren’t the way they once were and that his job has got a bit hard in the current circumstances is unacceptable when his employer (and other universities like Sheffield) are continuing to take students’ money, quite happily.
Frankly, I think it’s shocking that a university professor would admit that their teaching isn’t up to scratch.
Nothing is the way that it was ten years ago. In anybody’s industry.
Everybody’s job has got harder, squeezed by budget cuts and turned upside-down by the impact of the internet, digital technology, privatisation, globalisation, a recession, a change of government…
Roll with the punches, folks – everybody else is.
Don’t play the victim.
And don’t kick today’s graduates while they’re down – and when their tuition fees have just been used to pay your salary.
Let’s have a bit of respect for the class of 2010, please.
*Was Birkhead out of line?
Or did I just get out of the wrong side of bed this morning? Read the original article yourself here.
This professor must be barmy. What an insult to hard-working individuals
I think he’s got a point. Some graduates think that the 2:2 they scraped in between boozing and dressing up in silly costumes means that they have the right to walk into a high paying job, just because they have a degree.
People who don’t have degrees are often discriminated against, even when they have perfectly good vocational qualifications and practical experience. Graduates need to earn success – it’s not student discount time any more, it’s time to get into the real world.
So. The majority of graduates have been in continuous education since we were about four, which raises two questions. One: If we’re all apparently leaving university in a vegetative state, unable to think for ourselves, whose fault might that be do we think? And two: When exactly does Professor Patronising propose we should have performed all of these elusive ‘extras’ to make us stand out from the crowd? Perhaps he’s referring to finding work experience during education? Done that. Unpaid internship after graduating? Done that too. First Class degree? Yep. Job? Oh. No. That i still appear to be missing. Is it just me, or does something not add up here?
I think there’s something to what he says as well. You seem to be viewing today’s graduates as a homogenous group of hard-working, frustrated individuals, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true. And I think the culture of students viewing themselves as “customers” is part of the problem. This:
“third, by a culture where no student fails, and in which every university, department, academic and school teacher is micro-assessed to make sure no-one fails.”
…rings horribly true. Yes, we were paying to be there. But the high tuition fees mean that some people now do blame the university if they don’t do well. Maybe that’s true, but not always. The core problem, I think, is that people don’t realise that university isn’t just a more focused version of school.
Very few people understand that university is about self-directed learning – you may have 8 contact hours a week, but you’re technically supposed to work full time. Very few people do – I didn’t – but if they did, there’d be less room for complaint. People don’t want to do this though, and if the universities told them that that was quite often the best way to learn such critical thinking, they’d be annoyed. They want to pay for the contact hours, have their lessons, be given the revision notes online, pass the exam, get respectable results. Just like for A-Level. Universities respond to that demand. But to really learn to think (and I’m not saying I did), it’s not that easy. You have to seek it out for yourself, not stick to the reading list. People don’t understand that the facilities, libraries, journal access, etc. that universities offer is also part of what they pay, expensive to maintain, and just as important as the teaching. It should be really different from school, and that no longer seems to be the case.
It is totally fair to say that teaching can been poor, but I really do believe it has improved, certainly since my undergraduate years (2004-2007). For context, I’ve now returned to academia after some time in employment. I think I’m pretty impartial, and I have plenty of student friends and relatives still. The quality of teaching has undoubtedly improved – largely due to a new consumer culture and higher expectations. Certainly since my own undergraduate years, far more implementation of feedback and use of technology. This is great. But on the flip side, I have been shocked at the way in which some students now seem to expect -as consumers – to do well, and the lack of concerted effort put in by many. When tuition fees first came in, I was told by friends who teach that it seemed to have a really positive impact, with students taking their study more seriously. But now I’ve returned, I see this group balanced out by another who don’t understand that university learning is different from school, aren’t used to failing (they may have been able to coast by under school conditions, but no longer) and blame the university for the sudden change.
This is absolutely not everyone, but it is a fair number. And the people who suffer are those who do work really hard (including your readers), because unless they get a first they can’t differentiate themselves from the crowd. And again, Prof. Birkhead is totally right in saying that a 2:1 doesn’t make you stand out anymore, because the majority of graduates do get a 2:1 (including me!). It’s an achievement, but it’s not enough to make you stand out. To be exceptional, you have to be better than the norm, by very definition.
I don’t think Prof. Birkhead is talking about everyone, and I’d be really surprised if he didn’t have every sympathy for those who do work hard and still fail to find employment. But he makes some very good points about the way in which university is now treated like school, and the expectations of paying students.
(Also, I do think it’s fair for Prof. Birkhead to point out that “standing out” is important – your readers may know it, but you’d be shocked how many don’t! Volunteering extensively as a student made all the difference in my finding employment, and is my top tip to undergraduates I speak to. And they sometimes are surprised to hear it!)
Stephanie – I fully understand your frustration. But I don’t think he’s necessarily talking about you, nor commenting on the state of the economy, likely the cause of your unemployment.
“One: If we’re all apparently leaving university in a vegetative state, unable to think for ourselves, whose fault might that be do we think?”
I don’t think it is his or ours. It’s an outcome of the changing internal economy of higher education, and the impact it has had on the culture of learning. Students – consumers – expect far more hands-on teaching than they once did, rather than having to seek out knowledge for themselves and thus learn to think critically and evaluate the information that is made available, i.e., via the university library. Not necessarily you! But it is rife.
And two: When exactly does Professor Patronising propose we should have performed all of these elusive ‘extras’ to make us stand out from the crowd? Perhaps he’s referring to finding work experience during education? Done that. Unpaid internship after graduating? Done that too. First Class degree? Yep. Job? Oh. No. That i still appear to be missing. Is it just me, or does something not add up here?
He’s saying that a lot of people don’t do this – again, true. I don’t think he’s saying that if you did, you should find a job (though it’s fair to say that it will help, it’s just no guarantee). It’s unfortunately probably the economy that has prevented this, again, not something I think he’s commenting upon.
I particularly like this gem from the article:
” If you come to university, it is up to you, not me, to make sure you get your money’s worth.”
Yes, because so many of your undergraduate students come to university expecting to have to fight to receive a decent education.