Melville Petrosky

What is too much to expect?

I struggle with determining how to set the appropriate expectation level for a 400 level humanities course at a tech and design school. I have adult students with a variety of life challenges. My students range from a few highly vigilant A students to many more "I just need to pass" D students. There are usually a few students in between who are pleasantly content with a B or C. How do we combat the attitude of "I just need to get by?" I want to give assignments that challenge my students beyond just repeating concepts back to me. At the same time, many of my students don't "see the point" of general education classes and just want to focus on their "core" requirements. We are required to assign sixteen hours of outside classwork a week. I strive to fill that with engaging meaningful projects, but my students historically either don't turn in the work, turn in piece meal work, or turn in half-hearted efforts. I feel like I have to consistently dial down my expectations and scale back on assignments. This inevitably feels discouraging and counterproductive to our profession. I saw this sentiment echoed the other day when I read a quote to the effect that we used to teach our K-12 students Latin and Greek, now we need to teach college students remedial English. My concerns are along these lines. So, how do we set our expectations to accommodate a variety of learning abilities and needs, while maintaining the integrity of a college level assignment?
Thank you,
Melville Petrosky