[waterpigcow]

It is my suspicion that the attitude of american students towards their professors is perhaps a function of the privatization of schools. since students are paying for their education they feel entitled to a good grade regardless of performance. I would like to know others thoughts on this. I don't know much about post secondary education in Europe but it seems different from the American collegiate system somehow.

[lliamander]

Anecdotally, I've seen people who only started taking school seriously (studying, not goofing off, etc) once they actually had to pay for it.

Certainly feeling entitled to a good grade is a possible consequence of having to pay for it yourself, and there will always be those who react that way, but I think it is a socialized response that depends on other factors.

[dsqrt]

I have studied in Europe (Italy and Germany) and now I am in the academia in the USA. Having student evaluate professors has been the standard practice for many years in Europe. I also do not think that American students have a worse attitude towards their professors than their EU counterpart. In my limited experience, I have actually found the opposite to be true: I found American students to be more actively involved in their education and less passive than Italian students (on average).

[sdinsn]

> privatization of schools

Hmm? There has always been private schools. Nothing is new about them

[dragonwriter]

Over the last several decades, US public colleges and universities have generally seen a declining share of funding from the chartering governments, relying more on business activity plus student fees.

This is probably what is being referred to.

[travisoneill1]

The student fees and tuition are mostly paid for by government backed student loans. There really isn't any private education in the US past high school.

[dragonwriter]

> The student fees and tuition are mostly paid for by government backed student loans.

Which the student is required to repay, but in any case are not from the chartering government.

> There really isn't any private education in the US past high school

There are plenty of private beyond-high-school educational institutions that don't qualify for government financial aid and thus rely on purely private financing, so even if you consider “accepting government issued loans” as making an institution not-private, there is plenty of private education.

[waterpigcow]

I don't see the government paying for my college... In my experience a majority of my friends have or are on track to have student debt from having to pay for college.

[Fomite]

Technically you wouldn't see it even if it was there. For most public universities, it comes as a direct allocation from the state legislature to the university.

[Fomite]

Two things:

1) I would have used "corporatizations" of schools. Running universities as if they were businesses, framing students as customers, etc.

2) Tuition has become a bigger share of the budget for public universities as federal funding has been stagnant and state funding has been cut, which feeds the same problem.

[stale2002]

I mean, it is their money. So they are certainly entitled to something.

That something that they should be entitled to is a good education.