The thing to understand is that these students clearly don&#x27;t inherently care for the class. The graduation requirements list it, and either they care about the subject matter and can learn it in better quality and better time on their own, or they don&#x27;t and they&#x27;re not paying to learn.<p>Somehow in between the &quot;younger generation&quot; and the previous one, it became impossible to get a middle-class job without a college degree. Doesn&#x27;t really matter what you learned, but it&#x27;s a basic expectation that you made it through those four years.<p>And the world does owe people <i>a fair chance at a living</i>. To the extent that that involves a useless college degree because people want the credential, yes, the world owes them that.<p>Frankly the academics should just admit that their own incentives don&#x27;t include teaching, give students easy exams, and get on with research. There&#x27;s no reason for them to do otherwise, and if they try to be better at teaching than they need to and run into conflict, <i>they&#x27;re</i> the ones who are acting entitled.