One of the most tired genres of academic posting is complaining about your students. A lot of it is mean-spirited (how dare these kids not treat my exact passion with the seriousness I did!), but a lot of it is also just fucking lazy. Congrats, as a trained expert in your field you managed to nitpick a freshman to death, or discovered that they (gasp) skipped a reading.
@Zeb_Larson Have you ever heard the idea that the people campaign for political offices are not the people that you want running those offices? The idea is that the skills you need to campaign are not necessarily the ones you need to govern. I sometimes feel the same way about academia - the skills you need to get through a PhD select for many who shouldn't be in a classroom. Or, the people who can do research are not the ones you want teaching young people.
This is why I keep harping on reinvigorating career specific technical training. Most students will be better prepared for a job in their field after 18 months of focused training by professional trainers than by 4 years of random courses taught by people who would rather do research anyway. Our post WWII history ended up sending far too high a proportion of people to 4-year universities.
