
Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges - evo_9
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges
======
cryoshon
"Students are afraid to fail; they do not take risks; they need to be certain
about things. For many of them, failure is seen as catastrophic and
unacceptable. External measures of success are more important than learning
and autonomous development."

This is in part a consequence of test-based education. Students have been told
for a very long time that failing important tests like the SAT/ACT will have
irrevocable consequences that are negative. Most of their learning has
occurred in the light of this danger, and so, failure is a big deal. Actual
learning or autonomous development are pieces to spruce up the resume after
the good scores are in the bag.

~~~
crocal
I don't think the "irrevocable" part is the main problem of test-based
education. You need the test to know where you are. If you prepare well, most
important tests in life can be managed. What is really the problem is the
systematic punishment of failure. /This/ indeed can have irrevocable
consequences for certain personality types. I grew up in France and this
"punishment of failure" teaching system is a major problem of France's
education system.

~~~
eep_opp
Really, it sounds to me as though the main problem might be that these kids
are coddled before they reach university and maybe have unrealistic
expectations of themselves.

I think they may not have a fair assessment of their own abilities because of
prior hand holding.

I haven't seen the emotional catastrophe element that this article talks
about. But, I did witness the abuse of the faculty.

I saw the entitlement my generation is often accused of first hand. Many
students were hostile, rude and lazy. I gained a reputation for sticking up
for professors and calling my fellow students out on their behavior. In part I
do blame the staff. Though maybe they couldn't gain control because their
hands were tied by policy.

~~~
qrendel
Speak for yourself; I saw quite a bit of overt hostility from the faculty at
my schools. Things like berating and humiliating students in front of the
class, refusing to meet with students or sign necessary paperwork for them to
proceed, and a frequent attitude that teaching classes and dealing with
students was the absolute worst part of their day, an unnecessary burden that
they didn't have the time for. Quite frankly if I should end up having kids of
my own, I'm doubtful whether I will even want them to attend college if it's
still the same environment by then. Worse yet, I'm afraid all these articles
about millennial entitlement just work to reinforce and justify these
attitudes among teachers and faculty.

~~~
alienasa
Out of curiosity, where did you go to school? I've never seen anything as
dramatic as you describe.

~~~
qrendel
Ohio State University, Middle Tennessee State University, and Tennessee Tech
University. The experiences described were spread across all three. Oddly
enough the school where I (mostly) didn't experience those kinds of problems
was the local community college I attended for an associates (a better way to
get gen ed requirements out of the way, imo).

------
Futurebot
How about instead of placing the blame on helicoptering, which may in fact be
part of the problem, we consider something else: students being realistic
about what failure means to their future.

We're in an era of hypercompetition, increased barriers to entry for even
menial jobs, massive wealth concentration, vanished upward mobility (and easy
downward mobility), stagnant wages, credentialism, offshoring/outsourcing, and
vanished company loyalty. Viewed in this light, reactions of students to every
negative statement or bad grade is completely rational: with the incredible
number of people applying for each job, and the ever-increasing requirements
to get one (looking at GPAs, etc.), students know that even minor issues now
can mean large issues in the future.

Maybe students aren't hypersensitive; instead they're hyper-attuned to the
realities they're facing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3999248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3999248)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_inflation)

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/how_elite_firms....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/how_elite_firms.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/ernest-y...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/ernest-
young-degree-recruitment-hiring-credentialism/406576/)

Another thing I'd add, which is related, is that grit, while important is far
from sufficient for success. It would be great if this was more widely
appreciated. I wrote a short post on it: [https://medium.com/@opirmusic/the-
character-hypothesis-neces...](https://medium.com/@opirmusic/the-character-
hypothesis-necessary-but-insufficient-17c51427dbf4)

Side note: I tried to comment on the article, but the spam filter there is
incredibly aggressive.

~~~
WaltPurvis
No, the students are indeed hypersensitive and they (and you) have a grossly
distorted perception of the impact of objectively minor setbacks.

Getting a C on a paper won't ruin anyone's life, nor for that matter would
failing an entire course (which is basically impossible to do these days
anyway, unless you willfully refuse to even try).

Such academic hiccups are _not_ catastrophic and the proper response is not
for a student to raise holy hell about how unfair the world is and how the
professor smells bad and how they should totally be given a special exemption
to re-do things until they get the grade they desire.

Failure should be received as a signal that a student needs to work harder or
change something in the way they're approaching their education. Nothing more.

(And obviously the state of the economy has nothing to do with why a grown
adult would feel the need to seek counseling because someone called them a bad
name or they saw a mouse.)

~~~
overgryphon
Failing a class often has devastating consequences in college. Scholarship
programs generally have strict GPA requirements, and once lost cannot be
regained. Nursing programs are particularly harsh. Failing a class by a
percentage point may trigger the student needing to retake an entire year's
worth of classes, regardless of the grades received in the other courses. The
cost of an additional full year of tuition is not a hiccup.

------
carsongross
Articles like this remind me of "old economy steve".

Please, Professor with tenure and a pension, tell us how children facing an
increasingly winner-take-all world in which failure _actually is_ catastrophic
are too afraid to take risks.

~~~
rwallace
That's an argument for why it's reasonable to be wary of taking financial
risks. It's not an argument for why it's reasonable to call the police and a
psychotherapist because you saw a mouse in your apartment.

~~~
pippy
You'll always find people like that in University.

The interesting thing is the younger generation treating education like a
commodity. And given tuition costs, they have a right to. This will inevitably
cause tension between the academics and the students.

The most damaging cause it will have is on society long term, as higher
learning traditionally has been used for demonstrating the capability of an
individual. Instead we're seeing the capability for obtaining ~$30k debt.

~~~
thebooktocome
> You'll always find people like that in University.

The point of the article was that we are finding more people like that, on
average, than we were in the past.

------
tombrossman
Not directly related to the article content, but did anyone notice the odd
caption/credit under the top article image? It reads "Source: Google images
approved for reuse." which I haven't seen before.

A quick reverse image search reveals that it's by this guy on Flickr
([https://www.flickr.com/photos/topgold/6273248505/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/topgold/6273248505/))
and carries a CC Attribution license, which this article is clearly not in
compliance with. It's a publisher owned website an you would think they know a
bit about copyright.

------
tstactplsignore
>"Many students, they said, now view a C, or sometimes even a B, as failure,
and they interpret such “failure” as the end of the world."

After 3+ years of university, this has felt like a form of doublethink on the
part of some professors and almost all administrators when it comes to grades
and grade deflation. On one hand, you hear that "students shouldn't worry so
much about the grade" and "what you learned is more important than what grade
you got".

On the other, more realistic side of things, they've contributed towards and
support a nearly one dimensional system of graduate and professional schools
where a high GPA is almost everything for acceptance. Top med schools and
graduate schools almost entirely accept students with A or A- GPAs, regardless
of the student's other relevant experiences or accomplishments, and often
regardless of the quality or rigor of the student's undergraduate institution.
Therefore for any student at an elite university with the (honestly modest)
goal of becoming a doctor, anything less than an A- (on a curve with the
brightest students in the country, no less) is a failure because the same
faculty and administrators pushing this kind of study lock them out of
achieving their goals for it. Faculty and administrators in education have
created an elaborate hoop jumping game of achieving impossibly high and fairly
meaningless scores, and then get angry when students (a) are alienated by
something they used to enjoy and (b) decide to play the game!

The same professors who have the audacity to feel insulted when students
merely ask if certain content will be on the test or how final grades will be
distributed then turn around and tell students that their B+ average will
hugely limit them from achieving their goals when in an advisory role.

This is why I'm a huge fan of grade inflation- truth is, university grades are
a poor metric of future performance, and generally only serve to creatively
restrict, alienate, and limit students at the college level. Grade inflation
largely eliminates the fairly useless choking pressures of the grading system.

~~~
qrendel
I've been explicitly told by professors (who I would obviously prefer not to
name) that they considered a C grade to be failing, and that more than one or
two B's during your academic career is unacceptable, at least if you're
planning on grad school. So I agree it to be somewhat hypocritical to then
turn around and wonder why students react to their grades this way.

------
davidw
"The modulus of resilience and the modulus of toughness were calculated from
the area under the engineering stress versus engineering strain curves, as
outlined in Appendix C. Both are useful for determining the amount of energy
the students can absorb before yielding and fracture."

------
Animats
This is a side effect of a winner-take-all economy. Merely graduating from
college just isn't enough any more. If you're not in the 1%, you're a loser
and will have crap jobs for the rest of your life, or at least until the
college loans are paid off.

~~~
javert
I think it's a side effect of the expectation of _not_ having a crap job.

For all of human history, 99.9% of people have had crap jobs.

Life gets a lot better if you are OK with that, but young people are not OK
with that today.

~~~
derekp7
What's worse is that in more recent history, you could get by pretty good with
a crap job. You wouldn't have luxury items, but you'd have most of what was
needed to live a normal life. But today, if you have a crap job, you don't
earn enough to cover even the basics of life. Not because the basics are more
expensive (in relation to pay), but for many people there are more basics that
are required than previously. For example, either you have a car that
constantly needs work done on it, or you have car payments (and often times
both). And add in mandatory car insurance (full coverage required if you have
a loan). Without the car you can't get to work (unless you are in a major city
with good transportation options). In fact, the biggest struggle that I've
witnessed people (esp. single parents) having isn't food or housing, but just
maintaining a reliable transportation option to get to work and run the kids
back and forth to daycare.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Even if you're consider "poor" by American standards, you do not have a
problem with earning "enough to cover even the basics of life".

Quoting from [1]

"According to the government’s own reports, the typical American defined as
poor by the Census Bureau has a car, air conditioning, and cable or satellite
TV. Half of the poor have computers, 43 percent have Internet, and 40 percent
have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.

"Far from being overcrowded, poor Americans have more living space in their
home than the average non-poor person in Western Europe. Some 42 percent of
all poor households actually own their own homes; on average, this is a well-
maintained three-bedroom house with one and a half baths, a garage, and a
porch or patio."

And that's just the poor people. In this article, we're talking about people
who at least have the resources to attend college.

[1] [http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/16/are-there-
really-40-millio...](http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/16/are-there-
really-40-million-poor-americans-looking-at-the-census-bureaus-definition-of-
poverty/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=091815conservatives&utm_campaign=thffacebookad)

EDIT: remove duplicate word in first sentence.

~~~
derekp7
Oh, I agree that poor by American standards are still good compared to world
wide or historical standards. The problem is that if everyone around you has a
car, you really can't get by without one (due to society expectations, such as
being able to get from where you live to a job that could be 30 miles away).
Whereas if everyone around you didn't have transportation, then jobs, stores,
and housing would be closer together. And in the past (and in poorer areas of
the world), daycare is provided by family instead of having to pay half your
income to cover it. Not to mention that it is more miserable to go from school
or work or stores with A/C and then go home to a house without it. Whereas if
you aren't exposed to A/C anywhere else in the summer, you can acclimate to
the heat better.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I see what you mean: we're bidding up the cost of entry into white-collar
society, and people feel pressure to keep up with it. But...

1\. The fact that someone has something you don't doesn't make you worse off
in an absolute sense. I have trouble making the moral leap that we need to do
something that will amount to handicapping those who have earned wealth, based
only on feelings of envy in the broader population.

2\. In any case, it kind of proves my main point: it's not true that only 1%
is successful, and the rest of us are doomed to desperate drudgery. Your
explanation demonstrates that a lot of us - indeed, enough of us to set a
standard of sorts - achieve success. So the point that keeps coming up in this
thread about it being a winner-take-all world where any failure dooms one to
purgatory is clearly false.

~~~
kaybe
1\. If the infrastructure is then built solely for people that have that
something you don't, then you are worse off compared to a situation where
everyone does not have it and the infrastructure reflects that. This is not
just about jealousy.

------
rubidium
Calling the cops and needing counseling after seeing a mouse... Oh I am soo
happy I didn't stay in academia. The professors are the ones who have to deal
with the emotional trainwrecks that result from 18 years of overly praised and
insulated child raising.

It'll be interesting to see the next gen of parenting advice after this gets
sorted out. "Have you let your child fail today?"

~~~
DanBC
> "Have you let your child fail today?"

That's something that is being taught in some schools.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336)

(I submitted that four years ago.)

------
kafkaesq
The inevitable blowback from helicopter parenting. It will probably take
decades for society to fully recover.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent

~~~
mfoy_
I have a friend who has helicopter parents. The parents would take rotating
shifts to fly out and live with them while they were at university (and not in
residence) to keep an eye on them. To an extent it's robbed them of their
independence and they've lost direction in their life.

The parents truly mean well and love their children, but people don't become
strong by relying on a crutch their whole life.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I have ran into several people who have had parents schedule and come in for
(!) job interviews alongside their kids.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I vow never to hire someone who comes in for an interview accompanied by their
parent (unless it's support for a physical disability).

Can't such helicopter parents see the perception problem that they're
creating?

------
jgrowl
"There has been an increase in diagnosable mental health problems, but there
has also been a decrease in the ability of many young people to manage the
everyday bumps in the road of life."

Isn't this the bigger deal than student resilience?

~~~
DanBC
Increase in diagnosis may not be increase in incidence, but could be decreased
stigma, easier access to diagnosis, wider understanding of when to seek help
etc.

------
restalis
I see here all over the place (only) comments about the grading and in general
the current state of education as the root of the issue and what is to do
about it, but as the title says the issue is the resilience. Although what I'm
going to say may sound like a joke, it isn't meant to be one: Our society does
not have enough (or any kind of) psychological resilience testing. Currently
all of us are allowed to take any kind of risks regardless of the capacity for
risk-bearing and its consequences. All of us want the cherry on the top of the
cake and therefore jump at it, even the ones of us that do not feel
competitive enough. That is reckless, and the consequences of immature
decisions then falls on the rest of society which will have to deal with the
broken ones. Yes, the education may be too damaging than it has to be and if
so an attention in this regard is welcomed, but there also should be a better
selection of candidates. It does not have any sense nor it is moral to let
ignorant wannabes to throw themselves at something that may clearly surpass
their potential.

------
7Figures2Commas
George Carlin knew what he was talking about.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wOt2iXdc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wOt2iXdc4)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-ryuJDTpEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-ryuJDTpEc)

Pure wisdom.

~~~
gricardo99
Although George Carlin certainly had some hilariously entertaining things to
say about parenting (and no doubt insightful to some degree), it seems he
didn't necessarily have such a stellar parenting record himself:

[http://www.amazon.com/Carlin-Home-Companion-Growing-
George/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Carlin-Home-Companion-Growing-
George/dp/1250058252)

------
apalmer
good... this is the purpose of going away to college. Helps to trigger
independence and self sufficiency. The amount of people I know personally who
had a TOTAL change in personality between the ages of 17 and 23... is just
about everyone I know...

------
jackmaney
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm glad I'm no longer in
academia.

