It’s busy season at Tulane University. The Howard-Tilton Memorial Library and A. B. Freeman School of Business are often full until the dark hours of the night, and students battle to get the most desirable study spots. While it may appear like students are hard at work, looks can be deceiving.
I don’t want to discredit the complex and busy lives that Tulane students live. But, there is a problem that is far too common on campus: learned helplessness. Many students have a shockingly nonexistent amount of academic resourcefulness. In several of my classes, my peers ask questions whose answers are clearly outlined on the syllabus or sent out in an email.
Whenever this happens, which is far too often, I am shocked. We are a month into the semester, and you don’t know how the class is structured? Tulane’s acceptance rate was about 15% this past admissions cycle. We pay to go here. In fact, we pay a lot of money to go here. Is this the standard we hold our students to?
Another contributor to the learned helplessness epidemic at Tulane is artificial intelligence. In a world where nearly every assignment can be completed without genuine effort, students often opt for the easy way out. Honestly, it is hard to blame them; when trying to balance so many things at once in your life, everyone could use a break. But using AI to complete homework has its negative effects.
Firstly, it trains students not to try. At the end of the semester, the goal for most students is to walk away with an A. While this is a valid goal, many students overlook the true point of their classes: to learn. This only creates more stress. Students stress and cram for their midterms because they haven’t learned anything in the class yet.
Also, students become more dependent on the internet and AI to do simple tasks they should be capable of doing. Do you need to complete a vocabulary-matching quiz? Take a picture and upload it to ChatGPT. Do you need to write a formal email to your teacher? Tell ChatGPT what you want to say, and it will write it for you. Now, seemingly simple tasks are deemed too much effort for students, and ChatGPT floods professors’ inboxes.
Another element of learned helplessness that never fails to make my jaw drop is the study habits of students. Many students do not know how to study, have extremely short attention spans and have little sense of time management. It is common to see students whip out their phones in front of their professors’ faces. Not only is this rude, but it also only hurts the student.
Students don’t pay attention in class or miss class altogether and then complain about how they don’t understand the class. Students spend more time cramming and memorizing the material than they would have spent if they had given an ounce of effort throughout the semester. While it is not necessary to have perfect study habits and time management, the bar should be higher. Our students should be able to handle it.
It’s safe to say that this problem extends beyond Tulane. I would assume that students across the world’s best universities exhibit the same concerning behaviors and habits. It is important not to forget that Tulane students are very intelligent. But are they hardworking?
