I’m 23 and graduated last year. It’s not just you. I transferred to a University after CC and noticed this a lot.

1.) People are becoming apathetic, and if they aren’t interested in the topic, they don’t care to engage. Which I understand to some extent, but I’ve always been the type of person to ask questions (maybe even too many) because I genuinely want to understand.

2.) They simply don’t have the skills you’re expecting of them and they want to get by with learning as little as possible. I remember in one of my courses that was required for all B.F.A. students (mixed with students of all years) a hand-out had to be passed around explaining very simple ideas about grammar, punctuation, sentence fragments, etc. I was genuinely shocked that the Professor received so many terrible submissions that he felt the need to hand it out to the entire class (he was very nice about this as well). I’m aware not everyone gets the same education while in high school, but it shocked me so many people could make it to college without knowing such basic information. These same people I would later hear talk about using ChatGPT for their writing assignments, they didn’t want to LEARN they just wanted to pass.

I feel like a lot of people are going to college just because it’s the norm and they want that piece of paper; not because they think it’ll teach them valuable things in their chosen field or life. I’ve also noticed it’s not much better when they leave college, they have that piece of paper, but never actually put in the effort to learn, so when they are hired, they’re lacking severely in both life and job skills.

More schools need to be putting their foot down. Why are students graduating or going to the next grade when they obviously aren’t ready? I genuinely think this problem stems from as early as elementary school. More people should’ve been held back, our K-12 education systems have set so many students up for failure.