I (have) lectured to MA's and Undergraduates before at a UK University so I'll throw in my 2 cents.
Main issue with some undergrads I've found is their expectancy, or rather, their belief that they deserve a good grade for just turning up. Some of the stuff I've taught in basic political science 101 (constructing a good research methodology, basic epistemology or ontology, political systems in liberal democracies and so on) are stuff that I was taught at school (around 8 years ago now :'(), so naturally when taking elements of constructing the course I put these on as good pre-cursors for building onto the juicy, perhaps more complex stuff.
Some of the students didn't get it, which was fine, because I knew that not everyone would have covered some of this stuff before, especially if they hadn't studied politics or political science academically at school. But they still turned up with a sense of entitlement, like everything they needed to know was what I taught them and that was the end of the road as far as advancing their knowledge was concerned.
When I set the exam at the end of the year I purposefully ensured that there would be more stuff on there than they had been taught in lectures, precisely because that's the point of university (or at least it was when I was an undergraduate). You get a basis of knowledge from the lecture which you build upon through your own work and study. I wasn't going to hand it out on a plate and let them get a 2:1 or a 1st just for turning up and writing some notes from my lecture slides.
MY fiancé is a microbiologist who works in a lab. She has the same issue with undergrads turning up just expecting to get a good grade for doing shitty, shoddy research work. Most of them turn up in their 3rd year not even knowing how to use a pipette! Now that's not entirely their fault because the system has obviously failed them in giving them a grounding in lab science methodologies, but still, you'd expect students doing microbiology at University to at least have some sort of expectation/want/affinity for lab work.
So in quick conclusion I would say that yes, a lot of students that I come across to today are more concerned about their grades than what they learn. I can't blame them entirely for this. After all, they're a product of the education system they are brought up in, and if they're brought up to favour grades over everything else, then grades are what they will aim for.
Main issue with some undergrads I've found is their expectancy, or rather, their belief that they deserve a good grade for just turning up. Some of the stuff I've taught in basic political science 101 (constructing a good research methodology, basic epistemology or ontology, political systems in liberal democracies and so on) are stuff that I was taught at school (around 8 years ago now :'(), so naturally when taking elements of constructing the course I put these on as good pre-cursors for building onto the juicy, perhaps more complex stuff.
Some of the students didn't get it, which was fine, because I knew that not everyone would have covered some of this stuff before, especially if they hadn't studied politics or political science academically at school. But they still turned up with a sense of entitlement, like everything they needed to know was what I taught them and that was the end of the road as far as advancing their knowledge was concerned.
When I set the exam at the end of the year I purposefully ensured that there would be more stuff on there than they had been taught in lectures, precisely because that's the point of university (or at least it was when I was an undergraduate). You get a basis of knowledge from the lecture which you build upon through your own work and study. I wasn't going to hand it out on a plate and let them get a 2:1 or a 1st just for turning up and writing some notes from my lecture slides.
MY fiancé is a microbiologist who works in a lab. She has the same issue with undergrads turning up just expecting to get a good grade for doing shitty, shoddy research work. Most of them turn up in their 3rd year not even knowing how to use a pipette! Now that's not entirely their fault because the system has obviously failed them in giving them a grounding in lab science methodologies, but still, you'd expect students doing microbiology at University to at least have some sort of expectation/want/affinity for lab work.
So in quick conclusion I would say that yes, a lot of students that I come across to today are more concerned about their grades than what they learn. I can't blame them entirely for this. After all, they're a product of the education system they are brought up in, and if they're brought up to favour grades over everything else, then grades are what they will aim for.
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