Corporate Classroom Cultures Don’t Serve Students (opinion)

“I cold call in my class, because my students will need to be ready to talk on the spot as lawyers.”

In my work as a faculty developer, statements like these are as predictable as rush-hour traffic on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s not just cold calling, and it’s not just law faculty. I meet instructors teaching various subjects who reject assignment extensions, resubmissions and low-stakes assessments in the name of aligning their classrooms with the types of unforgiving professional environments their students will inevitably need to navigate.

I’m realizing this is not just the personal preference of a few instructors—this is a disposition toward teaching that a significant number of faculty seem to hold. This work-centered approach to the classroom is riddled with assumptions about what students need to succeed as professionals and the types of skills faculty should teach. But do these assumptions hold up? Does this approach actually cultivate timeliness and professionalism?

Career readiness has long been a primary mission of universities, and there are compelling arguments for why it should remain so. But are there times when mirroring workplace conditions hampers student learning? What do students learn when instructors penalize them for “unprofessional” behavior? And how do we reckon with the uneven trade of agency, inclusion and skill mastery for “fairness”?

How We Got Here

I’d imagine that some students are experiencing a bit of whiplash from their instructors after several semesters of institutionalized flexibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, when pass-fail grading policies, waivers of penalties for late work and access to class recordings became the norm. The challenges many faculty faced during this time—from burnout to questions about fairness—are also well documented. I think it’s safe to say that some instructors were eager to get back to “business as usual,” whether due to their concerns over waning academic rigor or a desire to protect their bandwidth.

Yet, behind the drive to return to “business as usual” are some common misconceptions about behaviors that many instructors view as critical for student success. To take assignment-submission policies as one example, there’s no evidence to support the popular assumption that deducting points from late assignments helps students become more punctual professionals postgraduation, and limited evidence to suggest that chronic lateness worsens students’ academic performance.

In fact, a 2025 study involving 273 online psychology students and a no-penalty extension policy found that “late submitters did not perform significantly worse than early/on-time peers on any exam, and over 75 percent earned passing grades.” Additionally, research suggests that technological interventions like push notification reminders about important deadlines and pedagogical adjustments, like clarifying assignment expectations, explaining why due dates are set and making an effort to align due dates with students’ schedules, are effective at promoting punctuality without the stress and learning loss caused by harsh deadlines.

In adopting a more punishing approach, some faculty seem to view a student’s inability to meet deadlines as a character flaw, or as a lapse in professionalism—even as they fail to train that same critical eye on the many unreasonable expectations under which students are and will be expected to perform in the workplace. Throwing our hands up and saying, “Life is hard and deadlines aren’t going anywhere!” is not helpful if your goal is to promote the highest levels of skill development in your courses. And such a mindset is guided by a few problematic assumptions.

Assumption No. 1: ‘Some Deadlines Are Nonnegotiable’

This is untrue for lots of fields. For example, postponing product launches and asking for deadline extensions aren’t as frowned upon in corporate settings as many would think, just like asking the court for an extension or rescheduling a client interview is more common in the legal field than some law faculty want to admit. Yes, some high-stakes deadlines are unavoidable, but this idea of “getting students ready” for performance pressure by raising the logistical stakes for all our course assignments is a false equivalence; we’re causing more stress and giving them less time to focus on the skills that matter more for their professional readiness.

Assumption No. 2: ‘Work Won’t Change, so Students Need to Change for It’

When we confine our learners to the rules of the corporate office, we’re signaling to them that the work environments they’ll enter won’t and shouldn’t change. How does such a message read to a student who sees the alarming rates of alcohol use disorders among lawyers or of teacher burnout? Why promote these work conditions in the classroom when we’re aware of their negative consequences? I could see how this normalization of grind culture might deter students from pursuing certain fields. Instead of weeding students out, we should empower them to become leaders who make cultural and policy changes that support employee well-being.

Assumption No. 3: ‘Work Readiness Is the Most Important Thing’

Not all students take classes to prepare for a professional role. And even if they do, there are invaluable lessons and experiences they might miss out on with such a narrow focus. If the instructor of my Acting I class in undergrad made us audition for the roles we played, cut us from productions for being late to class and deducted points for fumbling a line, my teenage self would have missed the critical lessons I learned about empathy, persistence and creative expression, all skills that I use in and outside my work today.

Where School and Work Should Meet

Being flexible as an instructor can be challenging, but it is possible, with instructors able to choose among many options for flexible deadline policies, whether they are teaching large or small classes. Let’s not allow the urge to turn our classrooms into the workplace—whether for simplicity’s sake or for the illusion of accountability—to detract from our top responsibility: making learning happen.