The most valuable things for me in college were reading books and discussing them (or listening to the professor talk about them). The other valuable thing was being in clubs, meeting people and making relationships.

I don’t think either of these are possible any longer. Students are on campus a minimal amount of time due to the cost and that runs interference on these kinds of relationships – there’s no downtime. Secondly, they are taking 18 hours a term to reduce cost as well, which obviously interferes.

I also don’t think students can or want to read a book anymore. They try, but they can’t do it. So assigning a book is like assigning something they don’t know how to do. But they won’t say it, because they feel they should know how to do it.

So assigning a chapter or two is all you can do, but the students are so well-trained to think of school as cutting corners, trickery, breaking rules, deception of the teacher that you really don’t know if they read it or not.

Therefore the only reason I wanted to be a professor – to share in these experiences from the other side, to make them possible, is no longer possible.