Teaching -- "college material"

Over at Confessions of a Community College Dean (sorry, no link, I have no skills..) there is a running discussion about the amount of time typical students work and the impact that has on their school work.

The basic problem is that if they actually DO all of the work and work their full-time schedules it is something like an 85 hour work week. Since a traditional college curriculum assumes that a student is working part-time at most, the question is whether or not the curriculum should change to adapt to the students?

First of all -- I guess I don't find this to be a new phenomenon. I started my BA in 1987, finished it in 1996 -- with some time off in the middle to get married and actually figure out that I wanted to finish... When I started, I was a manager at McDondalds -- when I finished I worked full-time for a beauty supply company. If I had a week in which I worked less than 35 hours it was a fluke or a holiday. This included summer -- when I took a full class schedule. In talking to my 87 year old grandfather, he did something similar to finish college - he worked in the cafeteria and worked overnight in the dairy -- he had little time for sleep or dorm conversations etc... The reasons for both of our hard-work are similar -- college and living costs were beyond the means of our parents.

It occurs to me that the generation that had it easy were the boomers -- their parents could afford to help them, or they could work enough to pay for school AND have time to relax -- because their generation was in the process of driving tuition up, it hadn't happened yet! My mom's generation was pretty lucky, as their parents had made some gains in the 1950s, and tuition was still reasonable.

So -- the problem is what to do now...

My advise is not to take more than you are sure you can handle and do well. It may take you longer to finish, it may be frustrating because you aren't fititng into some mold cast by the boomers of a 4-year degree completed in 4 years - so what? Their generation was all about breaking the mold -- so why do current students think they need to follow that path?

If a student needs a set of skills to get a job and pay the rent, then they have a strong economic incentive to get finished -- at that point, student loands and cutting spending seems to be the way to go... but, if the student can currently pay the bills and wants to be educated, then only taking a class or two at a time seems to be sensible...

I worry that we'll shape our curriculum to our students in such a way as to take out what is challenging. Every year I have to resist adusting my class away from the hard concepts and assignments. If we all give in to this temptation, then that knowledge will actually BE lost -- and that really scares me.