When Effort Meets Entitlement

Lubna Siddiqi
Sep 9, 2025
3 min read

It still surprises me how often the story repeats itself. Teachers pour their all into designing assignments, scaffolding learning, guiding students through feedback and discussion, showing students how to use tools like AI not as shortcuts but as companions for inquiry. Yet there are always those who believe the rules should not apply to them. Some think their past success is enough reason to demand a higher grade. Their egos are bruised by a result that reflects the fact they did not follow the assignment brief. Others want special treatment, even though they showed none of the responsibility required—missing submission deadlines, ignoring instructions, leaning on excuses rather than effort.

More troubling are those who misuse AI or purchase assignments, showing little fear of academic integrity consequences. Among international students, this trend is often sharper: many come on visas with the primary focus of earning a living. Education becomes secondary, and so paying for a paper seems easier than putting in the hours required for academic growth.

The Laxness of Our Time

When I speak to partners, colleagues, and fellow markers, the same pattern emerges everywhere: a growing laxness. Since the arrival of AI, a creeping sense has taken hold that effort and resilience are optional. Students expect to be passed regardless of performance. At master’s level, some submit work littered with spelling mistakes, fabricated or misplaced references, and poor structure. Others swing between two extremes—mechanical outputs that sound like a chatbot, or overly traditional essays that lack higher-level analysis.

We expect them to find the balance: writing and presenting something authentic, rigorous, and alive. Too often, that effort is absent.

Are We Preparing Students, or Simply Passing Them?

If educators give in—if work that is weak, purchased, or unethical is passed without challenge—we do students no favours. They leave with certificates but without skills. They achieve results without resilience. They learn that performance matters less than persuasion, that excuses carry more weight than effort, that ego triumphs over accountability.

This is not education. It is a hollow shell of what learning should be.

The Responsibility of Educators

The dilemma is clear: what should academics who still care about detail, skill, and the slow and often difficult process of growth really do? One option is to lower standards and match this new culture of laxness. The other is to hold the line—insisting that students develop the very skills they will need in the workplace and in life. Academic writing, critical thinking, responsibility, ethical use of AI, and the ability to follow through are not outdated ideals. They are the bedrock of future success.

The Future at Stake

Students who demand results without work are not preparing for the future. Educators who allow it are not preparing them either. Somewhere between the entitlement of students and the exhaustion of academics, the true purpose of education risks being lost.

The question remains: do we want to be the educators who only handed out certificates, or the educators who raised capable, ethical, resilient graduates/ professionals? One path is easier in the short term. The other is harder, lonelier, and often thankless. Yet only one path truly honours the calling of education.

An Invitation

I do not have all the answers. I write this not only as an educator, but as someone still wrestling with the same dilemmas each semester. I wonder what other teachers, students, and professionals think.