Hard Thoughts: Is it time to move on or did I have a rough year?

I listened to the podcast What the Canvas Hack Revealed by College Matters from The Chronicle (transcript and article) and it gave me a lot to think about, reflecting back on this academic year. Like many in higher education, this year has been really hard for me, my teaching, and working with my college. The crisis in higher education given student use of AI in place of their own learning has made teaching any course difficult, with online courses amounting to constant Turing tests. No educator goes into this profession to be a cop, and yet how can we assess what students know if it isn't clear if students are the ones responding. Moreover, everyone is asking the long overdue question "What does it mean to learn?" which pulls at the rug beneath everything in higher education. 

Between the long term trends described in the podcast (increasing costs, efficiency focus, cognitive offloading) and what I am encountering in my classes and institution, I am beginning to wonder about the risk to reward ratio of staying in higher education as an educator. There doesn't seem to be counteracting forces that would slow these trends, other than faculty and staff pushing back as they can and have the energy for. Employers, arguably the ultimate 'customer' of higher education, could push back, but it isn't clear they'll have a huge need for college graduates in the near or far future. Academic integrity for its own sake doesn't seem to be enough to moderate student use of AI, given the constant (sometimes perceived) push for high GPAs that will differentiate students in the workplace. 

The COVID pandemic accelerated a number of other trends, notably in K-12 education, and we are seeing the then 7th and 8th graders enter college. Based on what I have seen this year on weekly quizzes where they can't use a calculator, my students' biggest struggle is with basic computations; multiplying two numbers, adding two digit numbers, any operation with fractions, etc. If I can't rely on student's basic numeracy to answer questions and to generate sufficient information to generalize, and therefore understand bigger concepts, how do I get them to understand this new information?

The pipeline of students from K-12 is making me question some of the bedrock principles my teaching is based on. Group-based active learning requires some amount of common knowledge and prerequisites. Having a student who does not have a sufficient understanding of prerequisites puts them at a disadvantage, and makes group construction of concepts and ideas very limited. These students end up being passive receivers of the discussions other students are having, and I worry that this just perpetuates the passivity in their learning that K-12 has engendered in them. It also requires some affective domain skills such as oral communication, working with others, and general sociability. Student development of these skills during their K-12 education was negatively impacted by the pandemic, leading to a situation where I have observed about a quarter of my classes not engaging with students their age. 

Each term I share that I teach the way I do for three reasons; 1. Research shows it is effective in learning math. 2. It helps students develop necessary affective domain skills. 3. I want them to make a friend. Another way to put the above is that I am unsure if these reasons are sufficient anymore. 

The push for Guided Self-Placement (students place themselves in math courses based on their comfort with various math equations and expressions, no 'work' required) would have students place into a math course not based on what they know, but what they perceive they know. My department has luckily pushed back, but we are a minority in our state, and I believe it is only a matter of time. If Guided Self-Placement happens at my institution, it isn't clear to me that I could teach in my institution even if I wanted to. 

Dual credit in general is a fine goal, yet with its focus on efficiency for student's time (why take a class that just counts for just high school) it is another effort in alignment with these trends. I am happy to have any student who is sufficiently prepared take any of my classes, and yet it isn't clear to me that the sheer number of students being pushed to take dual credit classes is appropriate, given the above. I do think the 'demographic cliff' high education will face, the decrease in birth rates from 2008 leading to lower college enrollments, is a bit overblown. Shifts in who attends college has happened historically (GI Bill, technical education, etc.) but that requires research into new possibilities, investment, and building new relationships. I get the sense no one knows what direction to move towards.

Being around 45 I still have 15-20 years of working life left I am getting concerned that these trends will lead to substantial changes in students, how to teach them, and whether my teaching philosophy supports these new students. I am trying a few things in the next couple months to answer some heavy questions:

1. When I strip away the institutional friction, does the core act of teaching math still bring me professional utility? Joy? A sense of purpose?
2. Am I adhering to active learning principles with fidelity, or am I doing something wrong? 
3. Are other faculty experiencing the same 50% disengagement rate that I am seeing across in-class and online sections?

What questions would you ask to diagnose if these feelings are the result of burnout from a hard year, or are more of a signal that it is time for a profession change? Are you going through something similar? I'm interested to hear how any teacher or educator is navigating through these trends.