THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS.  We've avoided involvement in whether the austerity budgets of Republican governors in the Big Ten states are an assault on the economic condition of the middle class.  There's plenty of that elsewhere.

Money makes possible a middle-class or better existence.  It is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Cuyahoga Community professor Brian P. Hall gets to the heart of the matter: the first-generation, non-traditional student meme is not an excuse for poor life management skills.

I was the first person in my immediate family to complete college. As an undergraduate, I had no idea what my responsibilities were in the college classroom, but I must have innately known that if I wanted to earn the respect of the professor, I should first show the professor some respect.

He'd like to lay off some of the responsibility on the university-as-business, student-as-customer model, but that's clearly incomplete.

Faculty members were being asked to be responsible for students instead of creating a system within the classroom that makes the students responsible for themselves.

It does seem that the customer-care model has invaded the college classroom. Maybe I will just have to learn to accept it, but it will be difficult because any time a teacher focuses on dealing with a particular student, the others in the classroom suffer. No one is paying attention to their needs, which might just be to learn the material.

Put another way, the unprepared, uninterested, unmotivated and disengaged students are not clients in need of special attention, they are drags on the other students.

In another Chronicle essay, Elayne Clift, who holds gigs at several New England institutions, notes that the rot has spread to graduate school.

How could it be that graduate students delivered such appallingly poor papers and presentations? They'd gotten undergraduate degrees; why couldn't they write in sentences? Why were they devoid of originality, analytical ability, intellectual curiosity? Why were they accosting me with hostile e-mails when I pointed out unsubstantiated generalizations, hyperbolic assumptions, ungrounded polemics, sourcing omissions, and possible plagiarism?

The sad thing is, I'm not alone. Every college teacher I know is bemoaning the same kind of thing. Whether it's rude behavior, lack of intellectual rigor, or both, we are all struggling with the same frightening decline in student performance and academic standards at institutions of higher learning. A sense of entitlement now pervades the academy, excellence be damned.

Increasingly, students seem not to realize what a college degree, especially a graduate degree, tells the world about one's abilities and competence. They have no clue what is expected of them at the higher levels of academic discourse and what will be expected of them in the workplace. Having passed through a deeply flawed education system in which no one is paying attention to critical thinking and writing skills, they just want to know what they have to do to make their teachers tick the box that says "pass." After all, that's what all their other teachers have done. (Let the next guy worry about it.)

When teachers refuse to lower standards, those students seem to resort to a new code of conduct that includes acted-out rage, lack of respect, and blame. That behavior is fueled by the absence of clear standards from the administration, and of administrators who care about learning, not just financial ledgers.

Too often the balance sheet, educator apathy, and a fear of resolving difficult situations lead to irresponsible practices such as encouraging grade inflation and ignoring violations of academic integrity. Thus, both students and faculty members are set up for failure.

I'm not sure how these problems should be tackled, but this much I do know: If they aren't dealt with at individual institutions as well as through universal reform, the familiar claim that American college students are "the best and the brightest" will become even more laughable.

The comment section has been hijacked by culture-warrior types, but it is interesting to note some pushback to the trendy constructivist notions of oppression, as well as to observe the Chronicle, long the house organ for all-is-well responses to the growing awareness that universities are failing at their mission, providing more space to reasoned criticism of the sources of that failure.

It's encouraging, also, to note Robert Weissberg making the case for social distance.

Many of the academy’s ills are traceable to diminished professorial authority. We often feel like “I don’t get any respect” Rodney Dangerfield: students day dream, ignore assignments, barely show up, cheat, gossip during class, and send text messages among other contemptuous behaviors. And not even entertaining lectures, grade inflation and dumbed-down syllabi seem able to restore the loss of respect.

His thesis suggests that professors who dress down get less respect. There might be something to that, but taking a stand against laptops (you're not training court reporters) or checking cell phones or taking calls or elastic or nonexistent deadlines has its part too.

It does no good to issue people phony middle-class credentials if they're not capable of doing the work, let alone of giving the impression that they can do the work.