If only Bill Chace would come back and tell this to the tons of instructors at Emory who playb into the consumerism…oh wait, that would be impossible because the issue isn’t a problem with individuals’ backbones so much as it systemic. The tenure and teacher evaluation system kind of help to exacerbate this issue and I am unsure as to what could be a viable solution because it is too hard to get these academic jobs (professorships…saturated), and also not easy to get solid jobs after spending a fortune on an education. The two play into each other. The student wants or needs high grades (especially if going to an elite) if they want all of that money put in to pay off, and the instructor needs to hold on to their job whose teaching requirements basically say “get passable or good evaluations” and then focus on the stringent research productivity requirements. This is code for: “do not put much effort into teaching if it sacrifices research, release a firehose on your course’s content if necessary to satisfy your students, and then make sure that you at least sound decent when lecturing”. I think the current environment just causes both sides to be in a state of desperation where they just both lower their expectations so as to preserve their career outlooks. I do wonder if it is chicken and egg though. Perhaps if tenure requirements (or measurement of whether or not they’ve been fulfilled) and rankings (where the “output” metrics actually measure the input, the quality of students you put in) were changed, maybe “real” teaching can occur on a broader scale and things like grades would just go back down across the board (at all schools) such that it is not potentially damaging to receive or provide more meaningful and rigorous learning opps in the classroom, because right now it hardly means anything. Courses are to put A’s (and B’s depending on the discipline) on people’s transcript and the only “meaningful” learning will come through extracurricular and networking. Colleges (especially elite ones) provide awesome educations, just not necessarily in the classroom.