What We Deserve: A Survey of Student Entitlement

In order to excel at teaching, one must first understand the thought process of the person being taught. Today, our students have a number of inherent expectations that are rarely voiced, yet clearly anticipated. The objective of this survey was to determine student expectations of their instructors and how their expectations change as they progress through their academic career. To accomplish this, students (n=406) enrolled in animal science courses completed a survey that contained questions regarding their expectations of course instructors and what privileges they were entitled to as a student enrolled in that course. Distributions of responses were compared using a chi-squared analysis with pairwise comparisons to determine differences between student academic classifications. However, because multiple pairwise comparisons can lead to errors in analysis, comparisons were limited to the change during an undergraduate degree (freshmen to senior) and entering graduate school (senior to graduate). Of the seven questions pertaining to what students expect from their instructors, four questions displayed changes in student expectations among academic classifications. When asked if an instructor should be required to give a review before an exam, there was a significant change (P < 0.01) in the distribution of responses from freshmen to senior classification, going from overwhelmingly in favor of a required review for freshmen to a roughly even split for seniors. A change was also noted (P < 0.01) in students as they progressed from senior classification to entering graduate school where the majority thought a review should not be required. A similar pattern emerged for the remaining questions when comparing freshmen to seniors. When asked the following questions: “Should an instructor allow an alternative assignment for those students who fail an exam?”, “Should an instructor provide you with his/her slides and notes if requested?”, and “Should an instructor respond to student emails/texts/phone calls after 5pm and on weekends?”, there was a significant change in distribution (P < 0.05) of the responses of freshmen to seniors, while no change was detected (P > 0.10) between seniors and graduate students. In all cases, the responses shifted more towards the response of “No” as students advanced through their academic classifications. These data illustrate that there is a distinct change in the mindset of students as they progress through their academic career and the expectations of students in a freshmen level class are very different than those of students in a senior or graduate level course.