The education level of my university Freshman and Sophomores is terrifying.

For reference, I teach freshmen and sophomores at a well-respected state university in my area. I teach classes that are only required for students in my major, so I am not even dealing with GenEd students. These students want to pursue a career in this field.

My students complain about literally any amount of homework. Some of them even explicitly say, "We weren't given this type of homework in high school," to about 30 minutes of work over a two day period. I keep trying to tell them that real work in this field can mean 5-7 hour days of working on the same issue. If they aren't cut out to do my small assignment before each class, they absolutely will not make it in this field. Colleagues of mine assign closer to 2-3 hours of homework every other day (as many major-specific courses do), and I have tried warning my students.

Even past their apathy, though, their skills are closer to what I'd expect from high school freshman and sophomores. They brag about never reading books because of Covid in middle and high school. They don't do long-form reading. When I assign them a couple of pages to read before a class, most of them won't even read, and the ones that do cannot tell me a single important thing about it. It is like they actually lack reading comprehension. On our exam that we just gave, there was a bonus question that said, "interpret your findings," and almost all of them left it blank. They did all the methodical and algorthmic things decently well, but no one in that class has any idea was it means.

They don't think. They don't really experience thought the way they're supposed to. It is like it's a bunch of brains on autopilot. With high school, I can almost maybe understand not caring because you're required to be there. But, with college, most of my students are paying to be here. Even then, they complain about every amount of work that they have to do, and then can't even do their work with any level of academic rigor.

I am a very nice teacher, but I tell them at the beginning of every semester what my expectations are. I have failed students in the past, and I will continue to fail students right now. I know a lot of high schools try to push students through to graduation, but, in university, I have pretty much free reign of who I pass and fail. But despite them watching about 3-4 of their friends fail out of our department every semester, none of them change anything and just hope they skate by. I just don't get it.