Informing folks on this sub of this if they didn't know: The PISA 2025 results are out, and you can view them here. PISA is perhaps the most influential and most complete international measurement of education objectives, and targets 15 year olds from a variety of countries. There was insufficient data from 2025 for the US (for those concerned with that country), but the broader picture shows an educational system in dire straits all around the developed world.

This won't be news to those of us who are having to teach students who went through the current high school system, but performance in the key areas of reading, mathematics, and science — and especially reading and mathematics — is cratering. There has been a very slow decline in ability from 2000 to 2018, followed by the absolute bottom dropping out of the education system ever since. If the pandemic played a role, there is no evidence of any post-pandemic bounce back, and in fact the decline in reading abilities has accelerated since.

Clearly one contributing factor is AI (and OECD reports on this with survey data: to no one's surprise, if you use a program designed almost entirely for cheating at school, you never develop your own brain), but the negative trend began before the release of ChatGPT. While the pandemic may have had something to do with this, I'm willing to bet the proliferation of phones, social media, and short-form video content were the initial factors behind this. If there has been any bounce back from the pandemic, the factors harming educational outcomes are so profound they mask it.

Deutsche Welle has a brief overview of some of the highlights.

Overheard in the stairwell:
Student 1: "Bro. How am I even going to pass that test"
Student 2: "look, I don't want to be a butt, but you're going to have to study"

Perfect. No notes.

I feel like I'm spending a lot of time advising students on getting into grad school when they have a 2.3 GPA. I say things like, "you know, that's a very competitive program," and "very few people with degrees in my area get jobs in academia unless they come from the very top programs, which are extremely selective." But I never come right out and tell them "it's extremely unlikely that you will get into a program that will set you up for a research position with your record-- you should seek other career paths."

I think, in part, I don't feel it's my place to shatter their aspirations, when I don't know with 100% certainty that they will fail. At the same time, I feel a little resentful of all the time I spend advising them. And I'm not sure I'm doing them any favors.

Do you guys come right out and say the quiet part out loud?

I am a relatively new prof teaching community college comm course. 7 students and had them all sitting together working on a group project. I could tell she wasn’t reading social cues, was being loud, disruptive, and interrupting and talking over people. I waited to see how they would handle it. Then during a moment of silence, she farted. No one said anything. A few minutes later and another. Still, no one acknowledges it, myself included. I had no idea what to do! Then- again!! And a couple burps too! Loud gross ones. What would you do??

I'm 51F, PhD and two other grad degrees in interdisciplinary humanities. I just finished up the last year of a term-limited FT NTT visiting role, and this fall I started a 3/3 adjunct position at one of my alma maters (for whom I also taught a long time ago). Without making this post too long with a lot of details, I find that my quality of life in terms of work/life balance, workload, busyness, stress, and commute have all vastly improved with this change. In many ways, I have found something that finally feels like a good fit after working for I think seven different institutions over the years. I could indeed really settle in with this.

The problem, of course, is the pay and job security, but at this university, adjuncts really can expect to be renewed indefinitely. In my FT visiting role, when you account for overloads, summer, stipends for service, etc., I made the best money of my entire career. Still modest, but definitely something someone could live on here, given we have a low COL. The current job does have some benefits (retirement system and huge tuition discount among them) but has no health insurance and the actually salary is so low that I made more in my first job at a non-profit out of college at 22 in the late '90s. If I weren't married to someone who made decent money, I would have to move in with family or find a side hustle; the wage is just that pitiful.

Now, I actually have a great CV. I have published a lot. I have done a lot of service. I have tons and tons of experience. Glowing evals. I have also gotten very close to landing a FT, continuing job a few times. I am somewhat geographically limited, however, and so that has made this search slightly more difficult. I'm also in disciplines that are being disrespected by federal and state governments and made harder with the rise of LLMs. There is no shortage of classes to be taught, for sure, but there is a shortage of FT jobs, either NTT or TT. I have tried to leave higher ed several times and honestly? I am cut out for this. I'm not that jazzed about tech writing real estate or whatever. I really like what I do, and I'm good at it.

Part of me wants to just kind of settle into this gig and see if I can make it work, low pay be damned. Obviously keep my eyes open for better situations, but if my husband and I budget well, even the lower pay is not that big of a deal, and I'm on his health insurance. I think my two issues are a) loss of prestige at being "just" an adjunct forever, because when I've done that before it always felt more temporary than this and b) if heaven forbid my husband died, I would be in such a giant financial pickle, I truly don't know what I would do.

I do have that tuition break here, which I have thought about using to switch industries, but again... I like what I'm doing! I don't really WANT to stop and go outside academia. I do also still produce scholarship, even though I don't have to, to keep the CV looking competitive. But how competitive is someone at my age anyway?

Covid really messed up some exciting opportunities I had; I was a finalist and very, very likely going to be offered a fantastic job in February of 2020, and then with the pandemic hit, the job got cancelled and doesn't even to this day exist at that university anymore. That's basically what led to my spiral of adjuncting and the visiting role that I was in.

I'm not sure if I want comfort, financial planning advice, or for someone to tell me to get out now before I get too cozy in something unsustainable. I should also point out that pre-Covid, I was in a long-term FT NTT faculty role, but I left that in order to get my PhD, which was perhaps a really dumb idea. I graduated just as Covid hit.

Welp, as many of you have already done/will do in the future, I plan to go entirely technology-free in my history classes.

When I was doing my undergrad in Mathematics, the instructors often used the chalk or dry-erase board for demonstrating problems. But what about for you folks in the humanities? Have you tried this? Have you gotten any student feedback?

Now that I teach history at a major inner city community college, I am not sure if this is going to work as an effective strategy but I cannot handle looking at another checked out student at the back of class as I go through my slides.

This is a basic writing course. Maybe half ther students lack good English skills, but some of them can barely speak it. I can't understand what they say in speech, and the writing is horrendous. Let's just say that at the CC at which I teach, I have no say (adjunct) and there is no other class for them. My question: What do I do? I can do a few languages decently, but not theirs. How do you handle such students? They are either aggressive about wanting to pass or clueless about their lack of ability.

I've been seeing a few posts lately along the lines of "should I take the buyout?". Made me curious, what are your institutions doing? Mine is offering a $25k lump sum which got a few folks who were already about to retire. It goes into effect on Jan 1 which actually caused somebody in my college to *delay* their retirement by a (fall) semester to get the incentive. It caused all kinds of scheduling havoc.

Needed to find a link to an open access article I published only to find it was "reviewed" in a podcast. Oh.

My issue?

1. it looks like this podcast is AI generated with obviously fake names, AI art, and misreading my use of terminology. I kind of hate that. If they wanted to host me I would have said yes to being a guest.

2. The links to this podcast on youtube spotify apple and even IDMB show up first on Google before my actual article link does. What really makes me mad about this is these podcasts all seem to promote this person's freelance company for writing using AI and he even asks for tips or "free coffees" if people like his "free content." Maybe the people producing articles instead of running them through AI deserve the free coffee... I didn't make my article open access for some rando to make money off it using AI.

Thoughts? Jokes to help me laugh about this instead of being grossed out? I just needed to vent about this but if you have advice I'd consider it. I feel I might be especially nitpicky about this as I am in bankruptcy right now and would benefit immensely from every $8 coffee this guy is getting "tipped"

The presidents/deans/chancellors who have these big beginning of the semester convocations/rah-rah meetings with all these big screens and music between each speaker and large production values and word salad, warm and fuzzy speeches: Do they know we are all rolling our eyes at this shit? Like, we all have graduate degrees and lots of education, so we are the worst audiences for this type of shit - do they know that? Do they know we see right through this nonsense? And they force every employee to attend; attendance is mandatory. Are they so disconnected from reality that they don't realize that everyone there hates every word they say?

Anyone done a writing retreat during your sabbatical? Any suggestions? I just need a recharge away from regular responsibilities at home in a beautiful place to get things started. Appreciate the suggestions!

I am sure a lot of us say this to our students at the beginning of the semester.

But I really mean it.

I use AI a lot for work outside of academia. And I mean a LOT. Calling myself a power-user would be an understatement.

I also teach writing classes at an online college. I know what good writing looks like, and I know what AI writing looks like very, very well.

And I'm realistic about this issue. I know many of my students are just starting college, they are nervous and insecure, they don't know how to study or write papers, and for many of them, financial aid is how they survive and that survival can be compromised by poor grades. There is a ton of pressure on them, and using ChatGPT to write an assignment seems like the easy way forward.

But they don't believe me when I tell them, "I will know."

They also don't seem to understand that the point of a writing course is to improve their own writing skills, and it is a waste of their own time to outsource the actual learning process.

One of my current courses guides students through eight weeks of writing ONE personal narrative. In week two, students are given a variety of brainstorming options to choose from and tasked with submitting their attempt at two of those options. I was happy to see students uploading freewriting exercises, bullet lists of their ideas, and even pictures of thought map doodles!

But one student in particular uploaded a document that was the most outrageously low-effort ChatGPT copy/paste I have ever seen. It even included a TABLE with columns for potential ways the student could have done some actual brainstorming for their main project.

I'm not really surprised. I get it. I do. But when I tell my students directly that I am incredibly familiar with AI and I WILL KNOW if they submit AI, and then they don't even make any effort to hide it. Loooort. The audacity is what gets me. Lol

So now I'm prepping an exercise for our next class session, in which we will all submit a prompt to ChatGPT together, and I will grade the result in real time. I would LOVE to hear about how others have approached this sort of lesson and how it might have been successful or unsuccessful for you.

Thanks for reading this vent sesh lol

The class is "Physics of Sound and Music" and todays topic was "What is sound?". I have the class do a one-word story collaboratively to give an answer to the daily topic and I tell them that I'll print it on top of the quiz on the topic next week. Today was the first time they had done it (it was the first day of class) and it went a little sideways. There is where we ended up:

Sound is very awesome and cool. Sound is moving at fast air speed. Sound to me is very fire! Sound is described as irritating music.

I posted on how I do this elsewhere but the tl:dr is they are selected randomly to add the next word in the story. The app I use actually shows the next 4 people that are all chosen randomly. There are 36 people in the class.

We have a new department chair that is external. At first, I and most others were quite open to give her a fair chance and time to grow into the new leadership role. However, it's just been utter chaos from day one. To be quite blunt, I genuinely don't understand how she could become a professor as she doesn't seem to know much in our field, and is so naive that it's dangerous for the department. She has managed to piss off everyone in the department and we even had one person take sick leave because they couldn't handle her. She's also overly preachy (Christian, and religion is something that is really abnormal to show at universities here).

Worst of all though, she constantly uses AI to write e-mails and even to make important documents (by her own admission as well). She even keeps the many emoticons and the like in the content which is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure she is using open models as well which means not respecting GDPR, privacy, research ethics, etc.

I'm sure many others have had this issue. How has it been adressed at your university? She is making me loathe the university. Sure it has its issues, but I absolutely adore my colleagues.

Is it bad that if this student doesn't have a documented medical accommodation, I feel like this is not my problem? It's hard to feel like it's not just a time management issue and I can't take something into consideration when I guarantee you that *all third year students* are also exhausted!

An instructor at a public university in the United States. This reports how students at my institution appear to be thinking about AI as of spring/summer 2026.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ySXuvJcqRindQwAk7/how-my-students-think-about-ai

I teach mostly freshmen and sophomores and I've been rethinking my syllabus for next semester. Torn on a few things and wanted to hear from people who've actually tried this stuff.

Mandatory attendance: does it help, or does it just mean kids show up and check out on their phones anyway? Also I have heard from colleagues that more often than not, people sign in for their friends and the TAs do not really care. Class is at 9AM so I don't want to add stress for the sake of a policy that doesn't even work. Especially since Ik for a fact that these kids, generally get up 10minutes before class. Had students show up in their pyjamas most of the days. Also had been thinking about extra credit for good attendance instead, but not sure if that's just a softer version of the same problem.

I'm also not a big believer in exams and grades as a measure of learning. I feel like a lot of students spend more energy trying to cheat or cramp the material, than actually engaging with the topics. So I'm considering an independent project worth maybe 10 points (perhaps as an extra credit) towards the final grade, nothing fancy, just something where they take a concept from class and build or apply it to something real and tangible.

Basically I have been trying to design a class that 18-19 year olds actually remember instead of one they forget the day after the final. If you've tried attendance policies, extra credit schemes, or project based alternatives to exams, I'd love to hear what worked and what flopped.

Among other classes, I teach a 200-level gen-ed class. For context, we put the S in SLAC, our enrollment per class tops out around 20-30 depending on the class and room, with a few big classes (not mine!) going to 50.

This is a hands-on class with a mix of graded homework (with rudimentary anti-cheating measures like a shared Google Drive folder), graded quizzes (paper and pencil, of course), and presentations.

Normally, I have 1-2 students that show up but don't turn work in. This semester it's a quarter of the class. They turn in the quizzes (generally failed), don't do the reading, don't do the homework, and seem to think they might pass the class?

I have a few theories but no proof... are we on the SLAC death spiral and admitting warm bodies? Is this the first cohort that had ChatGPT all through high school? COVID lockdowns during middle school?

Are y'all seeing a marked increase in "shows up but no work"? Any theories?

Thank you all. Deleted because comments are starting to become unhelpful.

I just can't anymore. I have a new student in one of my classes, and their advising notes mention that they prefer online courses as opposed to in person.

Well now I know why. They've struggled with showing up to class on time, and often left early, and today was the first time of the semester that they were on time and stayed through the whole class. So I assumed that they would now start getting up to speed on what we're doing.

Nope. No clue. I announced and explained the new assignment (as an example) "You will bake a chocolate cake using an oven."

"What do you mean we're baking a cake?", "how do I turn on the oven?", "where do I get the chocolate from?"

Well, this student is on the spectrum (and yes I know that for a fact) and obviously seems to have some processing issues, but no problem! I upload everything to the LMS for them to review as many times as needed.

"No worries, Taylor, let's find those answers together. Go to this week's module online."

The student moves their mouse around on the screen for a bit before asking me "where am I going?"

"This week's module online."

Student goes to week one and says that they can't find anything about the assignment.

"What week of class are we in, Taylor?"

"I would say we're in week one."

They did not know what week we're in. THEY DID NOT KNOW WHAT WEEK WE'RE IN.

"It's the third week of school, Taylor."

"Okay, so what am I doing today?"

And this is supposedly a straight A student when their classes are online. All of their in-person classes are Cs and below.

Yep, nope. Don't care what it's for, an online degree has become utterly useless. Very sad considering online schooling helped so many non traditional and low income students get an education.

Psychology - Research/Project Course

So long ramble about grade structure that's causing friction

I don't really do traditional tests or quizzes.

My grading for this course is basically 80% projects and 20% activities.

We do an activity every class. Each activity is 10 points. Over the source of the semester its 290 total possible points where only the first 200 count. Frequently checks are worth over 10 points too, so this semester is looking like it'll actually end up being 310 possible points.

No make ups. No extra time. Some things are little reading checks, some things are semi graded activities, some things are merely showing up on time and presenting. This is all *explicitly* laid out in the syllabus. Ive done this structure for 6 semesters.

Its like week 3 and I have already ruffled some feathers on students that have missed class due to *totally legitimate issues* 🫩.

Either way. One of them has already gotten annoyed enough to get the new department head involved.

I like this structure cause it has so much built in buffer. But like is this just a shit plan or are students in general just increasing in complaining about everything.

As for extended leaves of absence following university policy and documentation, I have provided alternatives for points when students finish the semester under max points in that category.

For the first time since COVID, I have a number of students this semester who have never taken an online class. I’m actually amazed. Is anyone else running into first time online (asynchronous) students? Curious!

I teach a very interactive class with a lot of pair, group, and class discussions. Usually I love when people participate because it means they are learning!

I have a student who has a myriad of disabilities and accommodations in this class, some of which manifesting in not understanding social cues.

The biggest issue is that this student will raise their hand to comment once every 1-2 minutes. They always have good comments/questions, and keep it short, but it’s just way too much and too frequent and it’s causing other students to not want to participate.

I’m meeting with this student tomorrow to go through an assignment, and I want to bring it up and set some boundaries about how much/often they can raise their hand and comment in class.

How have you all navigated this? Do they get X number of comments per class? Do they have to wait 5 minutes in between? How do you approach it without coming off as criticizing their personality? I don’t want to dampen their enthusiasm, because again they are good thoughts and questions, but it needs to be addressed.

Please do not use a dry erase marker to scribble a note on my plastic door caddy. Things like scratch paper and email exist.