College Freshmen Can't Think for Themselves, Academic Advisor Says

There’s a growing frustration rippling through higher education, and it’s coming from the people on the front lines. An academic advisor at a large state university recently vented on Reddit about what they’re witnessing in today’s freshmen class—and the concerns they raised have struck a nerve with educators across the country.

The advisor, posting on the subreddit r/Teachers, described freshmen who seem fundamentally unprepared for independent decision-making. Students were asking to drop core classes because of club commitments. Others assumed their AP or dual-credit courses would automatically post to their accounts, then showed up at the advisor’s office confused when that didn’t happen. The broader issue? These young adults had no sense that managing their own academic paperwork was their responsibility.“Talking to them is like talking to the wall,”the advisor wrote, highlighting how difficult it can be to communicate basic expectations.

But here’s where it gets stranger: the advisor noticed students were outsourcing major life decisions to ChatGPT. One student changed their entire major based on what an AI tool suggested. That’s not a minor concern—it’s a sign of a deeper problem. Today’s freshmen seem to lack both the confidence and the ability to make decisions independently, even when the stakes are significant.

The Reddit thread exploded with agreement. High school teachers said most of their students aren’t ready for college. College educators with nearly a decade of experience confirmed the pattern. One person in admissions shared a story about a student who didn’t know they had to apply to the school in the first place. Another commenter bluntly stated:“Our current school system is completely failing them for life outside of high school and many of them are going to be shocked.”The conversation shifted quickly from blaming students to acknowledging a systemic failure in K-12 preparation.

This isn’t really about freshmen being lazy or entitled—it’s about a generation moving through school and into the workforce without ever having to navigate basic adult responsibilities. They’ve been managed, curated, and protected for so long that when they hit college and realize nobody’s going to hold their hand, they freeze. And now they’re reaching for ChatGPT because at least that feels like guidance, even if it’s not wisdom.

The question hanging over all of this is whether college is still the place to learn independence, or whether we need to rethink K-12 education to build that skill set years earlier. Either way, advisors and professors are dealing with the gap right now—and they’re tired.