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Isn’t this in some ways just growing up and directly having experience with the intricacies of a big system?

All those new things sound like considerations that were there before, yes even in the vaunted 90s to me.

Maybe the average role of parent has changed - I sorta remember college being perceived culturally as roughly a time to go be an adult, make your own choices haven taken a rough idea of the path, and get out of your parents wing.

I can’t see many the students being so interested in the things you listed. But then again, I never got to go because of the cost, and I don’t see first hand what expectations students have on them - but even if they do do care deeply about these expensive systems, where does that failure fall? Certainly not on the students who must work in the system that is set up for them.

> Isn’t this in some ways just growing up and directly having experience with the intricacies of a big system?

From what I've read, I don't think so. The underlying considerations may not have changed. But societal awareness of various problems has increased, causing both parents and students to ask things like "how many mental health counselors do you have for your student body?" or "what's the waiting time for an appointment?" I think consumers have become a lot more educated, too.

That example sounds to me a lot like a university taking on things they shouldn’t need to do, but have to because there’s nothing else to take them on.

I wonder how many counselors they have and how short wait times for appointments are in European countries where higher education costs either nothing or a small amount compared to median incomes

(edit: sorry, I misread your comment earlier)

> That example sounds to me a lot like a university taking on things they shouldn’t need to do, but have to because there’s nothing else to take them on.

"should" is pretty load-bearing there, but yeah, that could be. People know that mental health is a particular issue for college students[1]. In the absence of anything else providing these services, it's not surprising that informed consumers would look to colleges to do what they can, and competitive pressure would result in most colleges growing their offerings in this area.

[1] https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/mental-health-of-college-st...

> I wonder how many counselors they have and how short wait times for appointments are in European countries where higher education costs either nothing or a small amount compared to median incomes

It's a good question. In interpreting the answer, one would presumably want to know how the general level of access to mental health services compares between the United States and those countries.

When I send my own children to college, it will be exclusively through extension courses. No frills. A long time professor at Harvard did the same thing for his children and gave me this idea.

I feel strongly that these expectations could well lead to the undoing of Western Civilization.

"...is my child safe..." Perhaps the issue is that the people who go to college these days are still... children?

>"...is my child safe..." Perhaps the issue is that the people who go to college these days are still... children?

I have a half an hour soapbox rant about over-protective, bulldozer parenting and what I have seen it do to our kids if you have time.

I work in administration now for retention services, but I've done a little of everything over the years from maintenance and janitorial to executive leadership to professor.

My favorite story - I taught an educational law course; this was a 600 level graduate course for future principals and superintendents. It was a weekend course that met 4 weekends, for 8 hours both days each weekend. On the second weekend, one of the students came to class Sunday morning hammered. Not hung-over, I get that. But hammered drunk. Slurring, falling down drunk.

So, I sent this full-grown adult home and gave him a zero on what we were doing.

Monday morning, this man's mother called me to complain that I treated her son wrong. He was 15 years older than I was. He was a leader in his k-12 school. He was training to become a literal district superintendent. And his f**ing mom called me. Like, the 18 year olds I at least understand. The parents are used to stepping in at that point (even thought that's a whole other issue). But this man was a full-grown ass professional adult. And his elderly mom called to try to tell me I was wrong for sending him home when he came drunk to my class.

This is the world we live in.

While this is a really interesting story, I really don’t see how we can draw any big conclusions from it.

We might conclude that because this kind of thing probably never happened, say, 50 years ago, that, things have changed.

Methinks Heraclitus is grinning in our general direction.

Good point but I wonder which way the causality runs? I could make the argument either way:

1) Parent expectations higher -> college becomes more expensive

2) People would love colleges to do everything but they'd always say "we're a nonprofit spending all our $ on teaching/research so can't" and parents accept that -> colleges can get much larger amounts of money -> colleges compete on these non-circular programs -> students/parents raise their expectations.

I'm sure both are true, but I think something had to change. I would have loved all those services in the 90s but it wasn't considered practical.

Quite true. Additionally, there are raised expectations around wanting a perfect experience. My college in the 90s was block wall room with bunk beds and communal bathroom on the floor. Today everyone wants a private bedroom, shared kitchen and hang out area in their quad. This costs money and space too. At the same time, we now refuse to give deserving teachers tenure and everything is adjunct and basically gig work. Universities are no longer interested in education. They only want to create the largest possible funnel for endowments in the future. We do need to adjust how student loans work. The government should only guarantee a much lower amount and the rest should be dischargeable. And I personally would like to see it tied to the average 5 year income of students of that school's graduate per degree. We need to stop letting people sign up for $100K degrees in marketing when the average graduate ends up as a barista.

And then an architect proposes a way to do both for cheap, and then people complain that there’s no windows in every person’s bedroom.

Yeah, this is not the case in any of the colleges my kids looked at, dorms are the same they were 25 years ago.

> Retention staff, student life staff, counseling staff, new innovative (read: Expensive) programs, the 'experience'. These all cost money.

Looking at going back sometime within the next few years. I don’t need any of this shit. I want to learn, do research and make new connections, but I’ll certainly half to help fund it for it, at least for a couple years.

For example:

> Do you have co-curricular and curricular experiences ensuring that s/he learns about life skills that s/he doesn't have?

I’m a grown adult with experience working in many different types of environments, while school would be a new challenge, I’m confident in my ability to adapt to it without paying 1000s on end for courses designed for people who are barely 18.

> I don’t need any of this shit. I want to learn, do research and make new connections

You're running into the fact that universities aren't set up for adults, and what you're buying isn't really what they're selling. The activities that actually fund the learning is the undergrad college experience and grant money. If you want to join a PhD program and do research you'll find lots of resources, connections, and access to people in the field, and if you want to party, go to football games, and learn some stuff along the way there's plenty of resources for that too.

> If you want to join a PhD program and do research you'll find lots of resources, connections, and access to people in the field, and if you want to party, go to football games, and learn some stuff along the way there's plenty of resources for that too.

Yes, unfortunately before I even think much about that, I have to completely and undergrad degree.

Cut off the money and expectations will shrink to meet reality.

This is like a broader version of keeping up with the joneses.

A bit of a hot take but I definitely think Facebook/social media factors into this more than we realize. Colleges regularly have major artists perform “Spring Weekend” concerts and being top-tier headline comedians to perform. That costs a ton of money and it just wasn’t happening in the 90s. Or maybe it was? And no one else knew about it...

> Colleges regularly have major artists perform “Spring Weekend” concerts and being top-tier headline comedians to perform.

I actually got a notification last year an artist was playing in a city near me so I went and what I didn’t realize was that it was actually a university event that happened to also be open to the public.

It's kinda great though, we got John Mulaney and Chvrches -- loved them both. I mean the uni is like the second or third largest concert venue in the area so it's not like it's a huge departure.

> But also, the expectations placed on colleges have grown exponentially. Retention staff, student life staff, counseling staff, new innovative (read: Expensive) programs

Have they? Or are these just new things the college has come up with to sell?

I worked in a university system for a while, and my observation is that the expectations have absolutely grown. Yes, someone has to be the first to think of some new thing to sell, but once they do, all of their competitors have to do the same thing to keep up. So many of the questions from prospective students and their parents are of the form "do you have X" or "do you do Y," all being things that other schools they are considering have or do. It's very hard for an individual institution to buck this trend if they wish to stay competitive for students.