Has University-level education become less rigorous/demanding over the last 10-20 years?

Grad school is easier.

There are a few reasons:

1. It is about learning the material. There is no need for weedout classes, busy work, crazy hard tests like undergrad.

2. For most grad programs, classes aren't the most important part, your research is. Classes are just something you do. Professors don't want their students spending all the time doing homework, they want them doing research, so their class expectations are reasonable.

3. Everyone is mostly mature and adults.

4. Professors teaching grad classes are generally teaching what they are super passionate about and getting to teach interesting high level concepts, they tend to teach better

shootpost wrote:

Grad school is easier.

There are a few reasons:

1. It is about learning the material. There is no need for weedout classes, busy work, crazy hard tests like undergrad.

2. For most grad programs, classes aren't the most important part, your research is. Classes are just something you do. Professors don't want their students spending all the time doing homework, they want them doing research, so their class expectations are reasonable.

3. Everyone is mostly mature and adults.

4. Professors teaching grad classes are generally teaching what they are super passionate about and getting to teach interesting high level concepts, they tend to teach better

Also, another thing is alot of people aren't doing grad degrees fulltime. They are doing it at night.

Similar to research, professors are reasonable and understand this. They want to reduce the workload and difficulty and get you to learn the actual material.

When J.R.R. Tolkien received his English degree, he had to learn Anglo-Saxon. What does one have to do to earn an English degree now?

I went through engineering, I'm not sure how it could have really gotten easier, it's likely the exact same or maybe 'harder'. I say harder because you need to learn more as new technologies are developed, but it's not necessarily harder because we have techniques and technology to help us learn quicker. In engineering you've got your same courses that you have to go through now as you used to, and the same subject material is covered.

Older students are more focused and know better how to do things, so that they'll find similar classes easier. However, at some levels, university classes are now systematically easier because analytics-obsessed admins put pressure on to reduce failure rates for state money and national ratings systems based in part on graduation and retention rates, plus there are a lot of Internet courses even without COVID, and they tend to be very easy. Grade inflation is also heavy in most places. Rating and paying teachers in part by student ratings often leads to easier grading.

Definitely depends on the school. I taught introductory physics at two state universities that were nominally at the same level, but the students at one were better at math than the other.

Less maybe. 10-20 years is not a good comparison. When I was at uni, my professors had to learn chemistry WITH calculus. Now you can take chem without ever knowing calculus. And most of the life science only require a dummy version of calculus to get a degree.

"Has University-level education become less rigorous/demanding over the last 10-20 years?"

In general, yes--a bit. You have to educate the students you have--and the average university student is not quite as well prepared, coming out of high school, as s/he used to be.

I would NEVER go to college today except if I wanted to work in a field that absolutely mandates it.

So pretty much every field.

A lot of STEM master's programs (not PhD) are big moneymakers for universities. The goal is to get as many people, paying full tuition, into and through the program. Rigor is important, but secondary.

As Flagpole--many times--and others on this board has observed, a majority of people should *not* go to college (by "college" I mean a program, typically four years, leading to a bachelor's degree).

Instead, about 2/3 of high school graduates move on to college and about 2/3 of *those* enroll in four-year programs (the rest in JCs).

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm#:~:text=Recent%20High%20School%20Graduates%20and,enrolled%20in%20college%20in%20October

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The average IQ of college graduates is about 115--or was, until fairly recently. That's about a standard deviation above the average for the population, so about 1/6 of people are at or above 115. But the *average* for four-year college graduates is ~115, so someone with a 130 offsets three with 110. Nevertheless, realistically not more than 20-25% of the population should attempt a four-year program; nearly twice that number are doing so.

And you have to educate the students you're presented with. If there is pressure at your college (as there is at mine, right now) to keep the student numbers up, then it is unrealistic to expect the same level of rigor as when the percentage of HSers moving to college was about half what it is now.

If calculus is actually as optional or watered down as many of the responses here suggest, perhaps I could actually go back to school and get some degrees.

UCSB BA, History '96

National University, M.Ed, Cross-Cultural Teaching '05

I believe that the rigor of university education is harder than when I was in school. From 2012-2018, I worked in a Community College preparing writers to do what it took to make the grade in their classes, in their UC essays, and in getting ready for a four-year college or university.

I knew the grammar easily; I knew how to write; and I knew how to construct quality arguments. However, I had to research what a synthesis essay was to help students correctly. I had to be versed in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" in order to help students understand its relevance to modern society for an essay prompt.

I had to read key parts of Tennessee Williams to help a student do a proper explication of a writing, and I had to re-educate myself on the difference between APA and MLA formats.

We had to know how to write and interpret...sure...but nothing was in the scope as it is now.

Maybe at the university, it may get easier, but for what the community college students have to accomplish to achieve the equivalent of the two years necessary for an AA for transfer, I firmly believe they work harder than I had to in order to achieve the same result.

At the graduate level I think it is hugely dependent on where you are at. Some schools emphasize coursework and some do not. Heck, some departments where I'm at are primarily coursework where others barely give you grades. I think there is a big push to make graduate school like any other form of work, and this is watering it down. it's hard to say exactly what this means, but something to the effect of 'professionalism' that ppo want to pervade interactions these days, instead of genuine curiosity and intrigue. This is the "work life balance" when we should really just think in terms of "life"

I think most graduate programs have gone in the "focus on research" direction which is great if students' advisors and mentors teach them along the way, but not if it means they just 'work' in a lab for 5 years without being versed in the broader contexts of the field they work in. This is related to the above point about the desire to make it more "like work"

An obvious-but worth-mentioning point is that the undergrad degree went from an 'education' to 'job training disguised as education' to 'job training' to 'certification disguised as job training' to 'certification'. Graduate degrees aren't in such a sorry state but the current attitude towards them is closer to job training than education.

I was comparing undergrad experiences with a friend who went to Harvard (I went to a mediocre state school) and she kept saying "you wouldn't be impressed with the students there". The kids are undoubtedly sharper than those at my old school, but the aspirations are largely identical, only reaching a bit higher. Instead of 'healthcare' ivy-kids want to be 'doctors', instead of 'programmers' they 'work in (big)-tech', instead of 'business' they go into consulting/finance. Things that don't offer a vision of the future. This is because the opportunities people had 30ish years ago are slimmer so people flock to options that are 'safe' and 'comfortable'. This is not so much an issue in either of our fields, but fields like Chemistry lack a real vision for something that surpasses itself. This stems from an almost-incompleteness theorem where everything pertaining to chemistry is perceived to be contained within itself, and only enumeration of syntatic rules and relations to other fields are left.

A friend of mine with a PhD from a Big 10 school in the 80s taught part time at a low level state university MHA program. He said half the students in his class didn't belong on a university campus and he couldn't even assign essay questions because of widespread cheating but he was still obliged to move everyone along. Another full professor friend in engineering at a major state university in the Mid West said he definitely had to dumb down the curriculum over the last 20 years. He says most undergraduates are working now and can't keep up with the old standards. A co-worker asked me for some help with her finance MBA class with a for-profit online program. Honestly, it was high school business math.

knowssomething wrote:

A lot of STEM master's programs (not PhD) are big moneymakers for universities. The goal is to get as many people, paying full tuition, into and through the program. Rigor is important, but secondary.

The answer is definitely this. There is a huge difference between PhD-seeking and Masters-seeking students in STEM fields in the eyes of the university. For a school to take a PhD student, they're basically offering a free education and guaranteeing a livable stipend to every student either through the department or through some professor's grant money. The stipend alone will cost the school 5 years * $30k-35k and the costs would also need to cover any research and education costs on top of that. So universities go through vigorous selection processes to make sure their accepted students will be worth the investment.

On the contrary, for the masters students, they're basically allowing them to enroll in the graduate-level courses alongside the PhD students for a year while also charging the masters students full tuition for the courses which for a good school would probably be $40k+ (I think it was $62k when I went through my first year of PhD), which the PhD students do not have to pay. So major universities do not care at all about these masters students. It's literally just free money to them. There's almost no entry requirements, just a degree in some relevant field and they'll let you in.

So is it easier? It doesn't matter. The PhD students are there to do research. The masters students are there to get another degree to bolster their resume. The school is not interested in making the coursework either easier or harder. They want the money from the masters students and the research from the PhD students.

I am an assistant professor at a community college and have worked as an adjunct at several other schools as well. Many comments on here have been pretty accurate. Education is all about what you want to put into it. Want a good one? Work hard, study, engage with the the faculty. There are good and qualified faculty everywhere. There is some garbage that floats around too.

On the grad school side, older students with good work or educational backgrounds do far better than those who don't have research experience. There is a big push in the field to streamline the phd so it does not take 7 years. I did mine in 4 working fulltime. It's about how much you are willing to work and how prepared you were going into the dissertation. The requirements seem to be fairly consistent. Possibly, the bigger difference is just more people attempting graduate school than before.

For any level, if you want the best education, take the hard classes and the hard teachers. If you just want a piece of paper to wipe your butt with find some of the adjuncts who just give everyone an A.

That might be the case in some fields, but not in most hard sciences. If you are doing a thesis based M.S. in biology/ecology/chemistry - you are also doing research (just a smaller project than a PhD) and receiving a stipend and tuition waiver.

M.Eng and non-thesis based M.S. programs are totally different, and you are right - students foot the full bill and just take classes (and maybe do a "capstone" type project).