If, as Aristotle said, “Education is the best provision for old age,” there is not much ahead for an increasing number of college graduates.
I don’t know what is happening, but grading student exams and college papers is becoming a chore, not the pleasant learning experience it used to be. Every semester seems to prove that more and more students should not be in college because they simply don’t care and/or don’t have the skills to take and pass courses at any level.
Plagiarism is a huge problem. It seems that every take-home exam and paper is an invitation to googling. Then, the procedure is as simple as “cut and paste,” usually from Wikipedia but, if more creative, from the first 10 hits. Some students don’t even bother to change fonts or formatting. Some plagiarized my own writing! Others invest their time in one general paper that ends up in a variety of courses regardless of the topic assigned.
After an initial denial, “I didn’t do it!” that takes an instructor 10 minutes to 10 days to prove otherwise (university procedures), the next customary response is either “I didn’t know,” or “I do it all the time and other professors have no problem with my work.”