Inside Higher Ed
October 24th, 2014
Last post I argued that human beings are central to education. This seems obvious to me and is additionally well-supported by research showing that the most important thing that can happen for a student is to work with a faculty mentor who takes an interest in their development.
But the research also shows we aren’t necessarily all that good at it. The Gallup-Purdue survey of life after college shows that when asked whether or not students “had a mentor who encouraged me to pursue my goals and dreams,” only 22% “strongly agree.”
Only 14% of students report “strong” agreement with all three of the questions used to measure faculty support.
It’s also possible that when we do engage with students as mentors, our advice is either ill-informed, or even actively damaging. As one of my regular commenters, “Dennis,” says in response to the last post, “How many of the underpaid adjuncts who frequent this web site went to grad school because some teacher cared enough to say ‘Hey, you're really smart, you should get a PhD in . . .’ What great advice that was.”