The Most Common Problems (University Student Version)

I just finished teaching my tenth college course over three and a half school years. Across those 10 courses, I’ve had approximately 350 students in my classes.

During and after every semester I try new formats and reflect on what I should change, based on what’s working and who happens to be in each class. After 10 courses, it’s time to more seriously reflect on common areas of trouble for students. I make the claim that if these problems could be removed, then everyone would learn more quickly and more overall.

Don’t mistake this for a complaint. I’m presenting what I observed over these 10 groups of students. And don’t mistake this for a indictment of millennials. Overall, I’m impressed with this generation. Instead, let’s look at the point at which I see them – as students in a top university before they have started to work.

Lack of math skills.

This was the biggest surprise for me. Around half of the typical class population is not comfortable with math – and here I mean business math. Nothing sophisticated, no calculus or number theory. Just comfort with using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponents, and percentages. Ability to do some of that in your head.

Ability to memorize formulas and apply them in other situations. This subcategory of the above turned out to be a huge problem. When I was a new professor I spoke to a colleague who had just given a pop quiz on topics that the class had discussed for a month. Everyone in the class failed. My colleague must be a terrible teacher, I silently concluded. I decided to try the same thing and handed out a pop quiz based on topics the students had confidently discussed for a month. Class average: 48%. I was shocked, but showed the answer key, went through the questions again, and told them to expect another pop quiz sometime. One month later I gave the exact same quiz. Class average: 70%. That result led to one of the biggest changes I made in university teaching. I call it “tricking people into learning.”

Estimated time for a student to improve to adequate level: 20 hours.

Belief that they don’t need to memorize and internalize formulas and definitions.

Without the memorization, you often fool yourself into believing that you understand and can apply the knowledge in different situations. This is one area that should have the biggest ROI on student time.

Estimated time for a student to improve to adequate level: 2 hours.

No knowledge of Excel.

If there is one tool that you’ll use after graduation, it’s Excel. For the record, I love Excel. Sure, there are more powerful programs that do similar things, but for accessibility and universality, Excel still wins. One of the good random things that happened to me was for me to find an Excel manual during an early management consulting project that was going slowly. I spent a good part of each day reading it and trying out formulas. Finding that book easily saved me hundreds of hours over the years. Now, while I do teach within a business school, perhaps half of my students come from other areas of the university – engineering, communications, cinema, arts and sciences. The lack of Excel knowledge, and the pain with which they learn it, are just too extreme. Even the ones who have taken accounting classes, a student told me, do their accounting spreadsheets by hand. I do not believe that that hand work is intentionally there to guide them into better understanding of business accounting.

Estimated time for a student to improve to adequate level: 10 hours.

Ability to stay focused in class without devices.

I have tried every combination of device usage in my classes including no usage, total usage, usage only when we read a case study and on and on. Hands down, zero usage wins. Note that I teach undergrads and this finding may not hold for grad students. I also teach an elective that is more quantitative and based on using online tools. In that class I deal with laptop usage for class. But in my other class, which is a required class for the entrepreneurship minor, I have banned devices and laptops once and for all. After doing so, students become better at thinking on their feet rather than simply looking up a response, they have better discussions with other classmates, and they don’t need to avoid online distractions because they’re not online.

Estimated time for a student to improve to adequate level: n/a.

Ability to communicate well.

In general, the students are pretty good at standing in front of the class and presenting their projects. This is something I only had to do once in my time as an undergrad. For today’s students, in-class presentations are pretty common and their confidence shows. The area they could improve, or eliminate problems from, is in written communication.

The first area is email. I receive a good number of emails which start with the word “Yo,” or “Hey,” or which are tough to read because, I have to hope, lack of effort rather than lack of ability.

The other area is writing longer papers. Lack of proofreading, spelling mistakes, using voice-to-text (it shows) make otherwise smart students look pretty bad. The proofreading and spelling mistakes are easy to fix with software. Being able to write well though… Commit to reading lots of good books and articles and writing thoughtfully over years.

Estimated time for a student to improve to adequate level: 1,000 hours.

Other Tangents.

The most common question students bring up when we go off on larger issue tangents. Is a university degree worth the high cost of tuition? I reflect that I could take one half of the number of students I currently teach, charge them half as much a credit as the university does, and provide a better learning experience while also earning more. This is a reality that the American university will be forced to deal with in the next generation. It’s going to be fascinating as the change happens. What will replace the university network though I don’t know.

I am not a university academic. Becoming a professor was entirely accidental for me – I never applied for the role, but because of previous work experience was asked to teach. I’m glad I did. Teaching has changed the way I express ideas and think about their impact.

New changes. Since there has been so much similarity in the way different classes of students struggle with my classes, next semester I will distribute a list of likely problem areas. Avoid these and you will improve your chances dramatically. History suggests only a 20% class body follow-through on the offer, but I’ll take it.