But I tried really hard. Honest.
From the Post comes an article about a highly entertaining study that shows the level of entitlement of university students. Ellen Greenberg from UC Irvine polled 400 undergrads and developed some conclusions from the results. From the article:
Ms. Greenberger’s study reveals that students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, exploit others, shirk hard work and display “narcissistic orientation.”
While the reality is not likely as bad as the article makes out there are a couple of startling results:
- almost 17% of students polled felt that a professor should not take them to task for taking an “important” call, nor should the professor be annoyed at those who leave class early or arrive late.
- 2/3 of students felt that if they told their professor that they tried hard that they should get a better grade.
- 1/3 of students felt that regular attendance in class warranted at least a B.
It would be very interesting to see if there is a correlation between these results and attitudes in Canadian universities.
I would suggest that much of these attitudes are driven from intellectual relativism. Unlike those studied seem to think, not everyone is a beautiful and unique snowflake and not everyone deserves to get merit merely because they think they are special. Just because you think you know the answer doesn’t mean that you do - all ideas must stand on their own merits regardless of source.
If this study is truly indicative, we’re going to end up with boatload of inept and unhirable sociopaths in the employment queue. I hope that this is just me being a grumpy old guy though…
NOTE - I couldn’t find the paper on the ‘Net via general search or the journal catalogues I have access to. Nor could I determine the interview questions or location of those who were studied (though I assume that these were US students).Anything here rankle you? Feeling overly perturbed or elated? Leave a comment below. or subscribe to the Sauce Captain feed.
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