Comment by mklim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mklim | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.)

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").

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.

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