Comment by Futurebot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Futurebot | Hacker News Reader

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/how_elite_firms....

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/ernest-y...

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...

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

Anecdotal experience vaguely related to this—when I was in college (2010-2014) most people I knew weren't there to learn for the joy of learning, they were there to get a job they could support themselves with. Most of them believed there was no possible way to live above the poverty line without a college degree and were accordingly desperate in their efforts to earn one. A "hard" or "unfair" class was several thousand dollars down the drain and a potential future of eternal poverty, not a learning experience. I often heard the expectation stated by my peers that everyone should pass a class as long as they put in a good faith effort, because that was only "fair."

I don't know from personal experience, but I imagine it was much easier to be blase and accepting of failure when you could pay for two semester's worth of classes with one summer job (my summer job paid double minimum wage and still couldn't cover more than 4 credits, and I went to a public in-state university).

So, to rephrase, most of your classmates had a grossly distorted view of the importance of minor academic setbacks as well as a ridiculous sense of entitlement, which supports what the article was saying.

Your comment is the equivalent of "no, it's not, nananana"…

No, it's not (heh) — it's actually a faithful translation of what he said. His description of his peers is a description of students who have an objectively wrong perception, lack resilience, and are emotionally fragile, which is what the article is talking about.

(Your characterization seems odd to me anyway. I don't see where the person I was responding to made an assertion that something is so I don't know how you could read my response as being "no, it's not"; he simply provided an anecdote of his peers' mindset and I rephrased it.)

The description of college being expensive enough to be extremely harmful to the students well being is not inaccurate. The rest is true they did act entitled but then they expect that they have a right to a meaningful life which (in their eyes) requires both college and money.

Your grand-parent comment was about refuting the conjecture that it's due to helicopter parenting or a weakness of the students; then your parent comment was written as a supporting anecdote, and finally your comment claimed that the anecdote is not in support of the refutation at all, however without showing any efforts to explain why ("nananana").

My point was more along the lines of—failing a course is goes beyond being just a "minor academic setback" for a lot of people. It's really only that if one of the following applies to you: [there are multiple thousands of dollars available to you to retake the course, you don't need the specific course to graduate and have a GPA that can handle the F, you have some sort of future worked out for yourself where you don't need a college degree to make a living]. I knew people on scholarships where an F in a course was absolutely the end of a chance at a college degree (and thus, in their minds, the end of their shot at a middle class lifestyle) because of the terms of the scholarship and their inability to pay for classes otherwise. One girl was on a particularly stringent scholarship that she would have lost if she ever earned below a B- in any of her classes, regardless of her overall GPA—I could see her being hysterical over a C and I don't think her emotional fragility would be entirely misplaced. Her parents made too much to qualify her for government aid, but they weren't able/willing to pay for her classes.

Were people being entitled? Yes, definitely, almost everyone I knew felt entitled to a C- or above just for showing up to class every day, turning in the work, and paying the exorbitant tuition fees in the first place. But a poor grade was a multiple thousand dollar loss at best to people widely incapable of making more than minimum wage. I think the general emotional response is warranted in a lot of cases.

> Another thing I'd add, which is related, is that grit, while important is far from sufficient for success.

This, 1k times. I've worked hard to be successful and I see lots of people who've failed because they won't put in the effort so it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking they lack grit.

Then I get a big ol' dose of reality when I see my brother-in-laws who work harder every day than I've ever had to work. Or I see my father-in-law who worked at a factory for years, destroyed his back, and at the time of retirement made somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/4 what I make.

It's important to work hard, but it's also important to aim that hard work in the right direction.

As with several other comments in this thread, I think your worries about are exaggerated and even wrong.

The fact is that the common American has far more than anyone has in the past, and even the poor aren't fairing too badly, according to the US Census as reported here [1]

Your comments about vanishing upward mobility are very much debatable. There's plenty of reason to think that mobility hasn't changed. [2]

Perhaps even more surprising to some, while the middle class may indeed be shrinking, statistics show that this is happening by squeezing them up toward higher incomes [3] (this doesn't contradict #2, since it's a difference in counting income ranges versus n-tile demographics)

It's really not such an awful world out here. Some people just seem to want us to think so.

[1] http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/16/are-there-really-40-millio...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/upward-mobility-h...

[3] https://www.aei.org/publication/yes-the-middle-class-has-bee...

EDIT : in para #1 I said "Senate" when I meant "Census"

Try these, the data in the other direction is very strong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/opinion/the-downward-ramp....

http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/04/27/how-do-yo...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/28/ho...

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/the-holl...

Not just a US phenomenon either. Here's a UK perspective:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9000951/the-missing-midd...

I'll grant that my points are in some ways controversial.

But the very fact that someone can come up with a study at all that disagrees with your argument is sufficient to prove that statements like what we're seeing in this thread - "if you're not in the top 1% you're doomed to a life of drudging misery" are absurdly exaggerated.

That 1% claim is hugely absolutist, so it takes only very weak evidence that broad swathes of the country are content and even happy, to disprove the chicken little argument.

Some of those statements might be hyperbolic to a degree, but it's really a question of degree, not the overall trends. My personal characterization was 'The choice is more between "member of various elite / professional jobs" and "Starbucks"', which I don't think is all that hyperbolic if you look at the actual "hollowing out" data from Autor, Stiglitz, et al.

If you read only one link, make it this one: http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554 - the study is one of the universally acknowledged and well-respected around. As far as the happiness quotient for the broad swathes, I think the polls do contradict you:

http://www.pollingreport.com/right.htm

Edit: here's one from the AEI, a right-learning source you linked to (Tyler Cowen, a popular right-libertarian blogger's book "Average is Over" deals with this as well. Definitely worth a read if you haven't):

https://www.aei.org/publication/more-evidence-average-is-ove...

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.)

I'm definitely not addressing people scared of mice or bad words, those things may well be explained by helicoptering as I stated in my first sentence; I am addressing "hypersensitivity" to bad grades, which I think is rational.

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.

> Getting a C...is basically impossible to do these days anyway...

Depends where you go. A great many respectable schools can be brutal depending on your major. I had an undergrad class that had a 50% failure/drop rate, and I've had two graduate courses with 50-60% failure/drop rates.

>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

It's very interesting that this comes up so often with regard to Millenials. I'm a Millenial, and have been a TA in graduate courses targeted at working professionals. I have never seen anyone argue like these folks do. (Average age is late-30's to mid-40's.) Here's a sample exchange:

"I have been developing software longer than you've been alive! Your tests must be wrong - there is absolutely no way that my code failed."

Sorry, but everyone else seemed to pass just fine. Look, the bug is right there in your code.

"Well, that's not fair! You didn't include that edge case in the problem statement, and my solution works fine for everything else. Besides, I only need to add a two-line `if` statement to handle it, so give me half credit."

(Aside, I am stunned by how often I'm _told_ how to grade by Boomers & Xers.) You were already given partial credit; your final grade is consistent with the grading guidelines for the assignment.

"Well, are you going to curve at least? My employer won't reimburse if I don't get at least a B."

The grading criteria are covered in the course syllabus.

Don't get me wrong - Millenials are a pain in the neck, too. But fragile egos, demanding personalities, and pouting over poor marks are not unique to the young.

You make it sound like if you're not #1 in your class you'll be living homeless on the street. This is the exact type of exaggeration the article is discussing. There are many things in between Nobel Prize Winner and unemployed.

There are some left, but those middle positions are 1) no longer safe in the way they were once perceived to be and 2) vanishing faster all the time. The trend shows that "hollowing out" has been occurring for quite a while:

http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/04/27/how-do-yo...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/28/ho...

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/the-holl...

The choice is more between "member of various elite / professional jobs" and "Starbucks"; there is no exaggeration.

"What failure means to their future" can't be the explanation. I read the comment thread attached to the article before coming back here - heresy, I know - and the very first thing that leapt out at me was a long series of comments from middle-school teachers about how they saw the same thing. Clearly kids that age aren't thinking much about how a bad grade will affect their ability for a job. For one thing, at that stage in their academic careers it doesn't. Even if it did, and even in towns with excellent schools (like my own), that's just not something middle schoolers are worldly enough to worry about. If they're showing the same symptoms as the college students, there's clearly something else going on.

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