(1) As a recent-ish college grad, I can back this up. Lockdown began halfway through my final full-time semester, and even I noticed it in real-time. People don

(1) As a recent-ish college grad, I can back this up. Lockdown began halfway through my final full-time semester, and even I noticed it in real-time. People don't connect with material presented in a Zoom call in the same way they connect with it in-person. Professors removed entire sections of their curricula to respond to this. (2) I have nothing to say here. You're just plain right. (3) Both you and the professor are right. Students have a lot of incentive to optimize for grades, in lieu of developing an actual appreciation of the material. In any class I didn't give a damn about (Economics 100, for example), I optimized for grades. Also, teaching out of a 20, 30, 40 year old book isn't conducive to interesting lectures. The information is almost always noticeably outdated. An economics 101 book with no mention of the subprime mortgage crisis or Dodd-Frank is just missing a chapter. And yes, I will be distracted by the details of a question that references such antiquated things as landlines and "neighbors you actually talk to." I think it's justified for students to expect that a decade's worth of crippling debt will pay for high quality, modern course materials. (4) Not sure if this is anything new. Young people have been distrustful of institutions for as long as the idea of institution has existed. Maybe my generation doesn't have much trust in economists specifically. It seems like a field prone to the worst instincts of groupthink. Does every generation have a subject like that?