Maher: Have college students changed in recent years? Do they have trouble keeping up with the amount of reading that used to be required? Me: The answer is yes, they have declined. I can see it in my own class, which I've taught for 22 years. So we had a meeting with the dean at Harvard because grades keep getting higher. 80% of students get an A. The average GPA is 3.8 out of 4. Maher: Grade inflation, they call it. Me: No, they don't. The dean said, we prefer to call it "grade compression." Maher: Oh (with a hand clap, head roll back, and sigh). Me: Maybe our students are just getting better and better. So I knew this was malarkey, so I actually had the data, because I've been giving kind of the same exam for 22 years, and it's multiple choice, so it's subjective. So there's a constant benchmark, and performance has been going down, at least in my class. 10 percentage points from 2004 to now. So the standards have been going down. Students do read less. I think they spend more time on extracurriculars than on classwork, and I just know that... Maher: Scrolling, scrolling. Me: That's when they're in the room, yes. Maher: I have to tell you, they're not going to read your book, not because it's not great. It is. It's a book. They won't read this. I read a letter that a student wrote to the Crimson, saying you can get out of this university without having fully read a whole book. Me: That might be true. Now I've got to say, there are a lot of really brilliant, really studious Harvard students, like intimidatingly smart. But there's also a lot for whom it's kind of a luxury cruise, and academics is just one of the activities. So our dean, to be fair, our dean has noticed, and she has changed the guidelines going forward. She's actually told students--you wouldn't think this would be a shock--academics is your first priority. Now the fact that she had to say that, this is a kind of a radical new policy. She said that it's okay for professors to take attendance in lectures, which I'm going to start doing. That it's okay to ban electronic devices, which I might start doing. Because we actually know that taking notes leads to better memory than using a screen. Just a principle of cognitive psychology, when you have to think hard about something, when you've got to process its meaning, when it's not just a bunch of words, then you actually remember better. Just the process of writing puts it in your brain. But a lot of them have screens. There are electronic note-taking devices, but they're not as fluid and easy as the old-fashioned pen and paper. So my teaching assistants are going to hate this, because we're going to have to schlep handouts to class every time. Full Overtime episode: youtube.com/watch?v=fhQE7sCg… @RealTimers @billmaher