"Why Students Struggle With the Basics" • TaxProf Blog

I am catching up on an essay from April, titled “Why Students Struggle With the Basics,” by University of Texas History professor and prolific Substacker Steven Mintz. His focus is undergraduates. Law professors know that population as “law students of the near future.”

He explores answers (plural) to his framing question: “[W]hy are so many students unable to do what once counted as the most elementary requirements of college? Attend class regularly. Sit through a fifty-minute session. Meet deadlines announced weeks in advance. Participate in discussion.” Artificial intelligence (AI) makes an appearance, but only as part of a larger and longer-standing set of historical and psychological arguments.

Professor Mintz concludes with some practical steps that educational institutions and faculty should take, in response.

About the Author

Michael Madison

Michael Madison is Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a Senior Scholar with the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security (Pitt Cyber). At Pitt Law, he is Faculty Director of the Future Law Project and a John E. Murray Faculty Scholar. Professor Madison is a co-Principal Investigator of the Workshop on Governing Knowledge Commons global research collaborative and a series editor of the Cambridge University Press Studies in Governing Knowledge Commons series. He is a founder and leader of Future Law Works, a corps of volunteer leaders focused on the futures of legal education and other institutions of the legal system; of the “Ethics and Economics of Expertise” (E3) workshop at the University of Pittsburgh, a periodic conversation directed to the future of higher education; and of “PASTA,” the “Pitt AI Scholar Teacher Alliance,” a working group. From time to time, he publishes Your Leadership Podcast and a newsletter titled “Everything in Between,” about institutions and governance.