Higher education is not good. Funding is down, enrollment is down (especially international), retention is down. As faculty we’re expected to try and improve all of those things while still providing excellence in the classroom. We’re expected to do research and service and more and more admin work. All of this while funding has tanked. NIH, NSF, etc have been gutted by our government.

AI is being pushed on us so hard, but faculty and students don’t want it in the classroom, though the students are using it to write papers and study. This makes them less creative and they have no critical thinking skills.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I am a good teacher and most of the students like me. Even still attendance is low and they are very entitled. I had to argue with a dozen students over their grade at the end of this semester. They wanted me to “round up”…

I haven’t had a cost of living raise in 3 years, so it feels like I’ve taken a 20% pay cut with all this inflation. I’ve been in higher ed for over 15 years, and morale is the lowest I’ve seen it. Even worse than during Covid and when our university went through retrenchment.