Amazing students

We all have stories. I've got mine. I have had some amazing students over my years of teaching. Some have become fast friends.

One kind of 'amazing' is the type of student who is a member of an immigrant family from Romania, Moldavia (we have a Moldavian consulate in town), Pakistan, India, Korea, China, or Japan, and who struggles in English as a foreign language, yet comes out at the end of the semester with one of the three top grades in an honors course -- in a class of some twenty students, most of whom are from upper-middle class Anglo families with money to burn.

Another kind of 'amazing' is the student who is hearing impaired who takes in lectures through a sign language interpreter and who achieves the same kind of academic levels by end-of-semester.

Yet another kind of 'amazing' is the exceptional student majoring in Physical Education, Sports Management, Athletic Training, or Health & Exercise Science [sic.], who pulls down straight 'A' grades in tests, writes brilliantly articulate papers, and achieves similar end-of-semester academic goals.

Still another kind of 'amazing' is what I find in my honors students, who can be generally counted upon to actually read their assignments, be prepared for in-class discussion, and to actively participate in lively classroom debate. I've always loved these students, who make teaching a joy and the classroom experience a genuine delight.

Most 'amazing', however, are those dime-a-dozen students whose parents pay 1k per semester for one of my courses, and never bother to buy the texts for the course, take notes, stay awake in class, or even trouble themselves to come to class. That's amazing.

I know, I must be boring. I received the Raymond Morris Bost Distinguished Professor Award for excellence in teaching at Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1990. More telling, perhaps, may be the development that nearly one-third of all students at this institution are now majoring in some program of study related to athletics or physical education. Large billboards around town have featured advertisements for the college carrying banner headlines reading, not "Academic Excellence," but "Athletic Excellence" [sic.]. (Incidentally, I'm not sure if anyone can remember when our major sports teams had a winning season, but that's a detail.) Another recruiting brochure contained a caption declaiming: "we may not be Harvard, but ..." Really? No kidding?

I've had all of these types of students in my classes, all of them truly amazing. But by far the most common type are those in the last category. I noticed a sea change in our quality of in-coming freshmen about five years ago. 17 out of 30 students failed a freshman survey course. In my two decades of teaching experience prior to that, nothing of the kind had ever happened. Maybe two or three students would fail a core-level survey course, but not half the class. Furthermore, I've not become more rigorous in my grading over the years; if anything, I've become too lenient. What's happening in your neck of the woods? Thoughts?