I think many of your categories shift slightly in higher ed. Teaching engineering at the collegiate level, I see a blend of several of these, but my most common student (other than the striver) is the Realist. The realist, like the specialist, focuses on discipline specific content knowing that those concepts are relevant for life after graduation. However, in engineering, many have internships as early as their summer after their freshman year. As such, they add a type of judgement outside of curriculum and grading. They weigh both the value they see industry place on specific skills and the feedback they receive on such skills. “Who cares if a professor gave me a B in CAD? I did CAD all summer and my bosses loved me.” The college curriculum and professors themselves take a back seat to industry “experts” (or anyone they talked to during an internship) which becomes the new benchmark. Formal grades don’t matter because they are seeking judgement from somewhere beyond the academic setting.
That's an interesting point. There's always a subset of students who orient their definition of success around a third party, whether it's colleges or grad schools or employers. I wonder whether it can be used as a way to defray critique. Like, "You actually have nothing to teach me because my internship supervisor said I'd be great, so at this point I'm just here to get the degree on my CV." It's just a matter of whose opinion you choose to let impact you. And after 15 years of being graded in school, I imagine many college students feel it's a novel experience to be assessed in wholly different terms.
I think many of your categories shift slightly in higher ed. Teaching engineering at the collegiate level, I see a blend of several of these, but my most common student (other than the striver) is the Realist. The realist, like the specialist, focuses on discipline specific content knowing that those concepts are relevant for life after graduation. However, in engineering, many have internships as early as their summer after their freshman year. As such, they add a type of judgement outside of curriculum and grading. They weigh both the value they see industry place on specific skills and the feedback they receive on such skills. “Who cares if a professor gave me a B in CAD? I did CAD all summer and my bosses loved me.” The college curriculum and professors themselves take a back seat to industry “experts” (or anyone they talked to during an internship) which becomes the new benchmark. Formal grades don’t matter because they are seeking judgement from somewhere beyond the academic setting.
That's an interesting point. There's always a subset of students who orient their definition of success around a third party, whether it's colleges or grad schools or employers. I wonder whether it can be used as a way to defray critique. Like, "You actually have nothing to teach me because my internship supervisor said I'd be great, so at this point I'm just here to get the degree on my CV." It's just a matter of whose opinion you choose to let impact you. And after 15 years of being graded in school, I imagine many college students feel it's a novel experience to be assessed in wholly different terms.