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campusreview.com.au
The best policy
Less honest university students
more likely to expect higher grades,
research says.
By Wade Zaglas
A
ustralian Catholic University (ACU)
senior researcher Douglas Russell
was part of a collaborative team of
researchers who found that students who
are less honest potentially expect higher
grades, regardless of their efforts.
Termed ‘academic entitlement’, it refers
to students who believe they are “inherently
deserving of certain privileges in an
academic setting”. Unsurprisingly, students
who were more honest had a lower sense
of academic entitlement.
Researchers also concluded that
personality traits had a more profound
impact on academic entitlement than the
backgrounds of students’ families. These
traits included being less emotionally stable
and less humble.
Students who tended to be more social
were also less likely to blame others for
sub-standard academic results.
In collaboration with other researchers
at Middlesex University in Dubai, Russell
examined the attitudes of 170 first-year and
second-year undergraduate students at
the private university. The research paper
‘My Grade, My Right’, published in the
Social Psychology of Education journal,
found that having “low levels of honesty
and humility were the strongest predictors
of a high sense of academic entitlement”.
“For academics working in a tertiary
institution, the following scenario
is probably all too familiar: some
undergraduate students feel they deserve
good grades without much effort and
blame their failure on their lecturers,”
Russell said.
“Educators across the globe are
confronted with these attitudes in
universities. They know all too well
about the growing number of students
who begin their tertiary studies with a
sense of academic entitlement, entitled
expectations, not taking personal
responsibility and unrealistic expectations.”
Russell attributes part of the high
expectations on funding decreases in the
higher education sector, declines in staff
numbers and increases in international
student enrolments which has coalesced to
create a “consumer-based” model.
“A consumer-based model lends itself
to commercial demands such as high
expectations of satisfaction and service
delivery,” although more research is needed
in this area, Russell said.
“Unfortunately, these expectations
jeopardise intellectual engagement and
active educational involvement which are
the hallmarks of academic excellence.
“What was surprising, though, was that
any relationship between family influence
such as parental expectations and
academic entitlement is invalidated when
you consider the student’s personality. This
was a new finding. A student’s personality
overrides that to some extent.”
The research used the six-factor
HEXACO personality model developed by
researchers Ashton and Lee and explained
in their book, The H Factor of Personality.
The six factors, or dimensions, include
honesty-humility (H), emotionality (E),
extraversion (X), agreeableness (A),
conscientiousness (C), and openness to
experience (O).
“Of the 170 students in the study, 92 were
asked to predict their own grades for two
different kinds of assignments: a laboratory
report (structured), and an in-class exam or
essay (open-ended),” Russell said. “Students
with higher entitled expectations tended
to overestimate their grades with the exam
and essay. Interestingly, students did not
overestimate or underestimate their grades
for laboratory reports.
“The overestimation of grades in essays
and exams could be related to the fact
these modes of assessment have fewer
guidelines than laboratory reports.
“In a user-pays education model, it might
be more intuitive for students to hold
university staff responsible for disappointing
outcomes rather than taking responsibility
themselves.”
For Russell, the findings suggest that
honest student feedback would be more
helpful and that students should be
supported in taking more responsibility or
ownership for their academic achievement.
More self-reflection, for instance, and
peer review could also encourage
students to give each other more honest,
constructive feedback.
Explicit advice on what is expected
in assignments – using a range of
explanations – could also “decrease feelings
of uncertainty for students”.
Possibilities for further research in the
area include whether the findings are
replicated in a public university setting,
as opposed to an exclusively private
one, with students from more privileged
backgrounds. ■
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