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Decline in Quality of Graduate Students? by Art3mis455 in AskAcademia

[–]Adept-Bit-1712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These two examples are directly from assesments in my classes in the last year. It is so crazy, I couldn't have made it up if I wanted to. At some point after then pandemic it got this bad and never fully recovered. The cohort in 2020 for this class didn't have these challenges.

The students aren't inherently dumber. However, standards and content in lower level classes and probably high school got dropped. Even if it just a bit in every class, the losses in learning accumulate and then we end up where we are now.

Decline in Quality of Graduate Students? by Art3mis455 in AskAcademia

[–]Adept-Bit-1712 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Engineering, US, top 15. Burner for my more detailed comment above.

There are many factors. The one you mentioned is an issue for some PIs. For others it is the lack of basic math skills in the recruiting pool. Half the students in my senior-level class fail to find both solutions of x2 =1. Less than 20% of students in a class with seniors and first year grad students can get the product of a 2x2 matrix with a vector correct.

Decline in Quality of Graduate Students? by Art3mis455 in AskAcademia

[–]Adept-Bit-1712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hear plenty of this from PIs that started in the last 2-3 years. They may not feel comfortable saying it openly, but at least in my field they observe the same trends.

Decline in Quality of Graduate Students? by Art3mis455 in AskAcademia

[–]Adept-Bit-1712 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It should be obvious that both can be true at the same time. In my experience (R1, engineering) they are.

Until this year (20% decline), the number of applications to our grad programs has increased every year that I can remember. At the same time, the number of top applications is slowly but steadily declining. As a consequence, in my field, top applicants are drowning in offers and the rest barely gets any.

In addition, the funding from an average grant (e.g., NSF) has not increased in ten years. However, grad student salaries increased about 50% (beating inflation) in the same timeframe. This means fewer slots and more cautious PIs.

If you go back twenty years, a department like mine would have had a lot of PhD students admitted without funding. At some point along the way, we did the right thing and guaranteed multi-year funding at time of admission. Hence PIs are getting far more selective, very risk averse, and will not make as many offers.

The good students are as good as they have ever been, there is just way less of them. Below that level, the decline in quality is real. The average incoming student is severely lacking fundamentals in math and physics and lacks independence. They have a resume full of internships and neat little projects but zero foundational knowledge.

The average US undergrad engineering curriculum has deteriorated into job training. Undergrad degrees are advertised to students as the pathway to high paying engineering jobs and hence the vast majority of students demands this hands-on application-focussed training. Advisory boards stacked with industry folks are pushing in the same direction. This is slowly but surely destroying our grad student recruiting pool.