To be fair, even in highly ranked master’s programs, “rigor” is sometimes improperly used to describe how miserable the student experience is, instead of how deeply students are expected to master some subject. Some of the most “rigorous” courses I’ve ever taken failed to go beyond my undergraduate coursework or to expect any sophisticated insight from me. The TAs would seem confused about some parts of the courses themselves, adding to a sense of “rigor.”

While I seek out courses with high expectations and appreciate a challenge, I do my moral duty when I raise issues about courses that are “rigorous” in ways unrelated to that. When someone says “rigor,” unfortunately these days, you have to confirm what they mean by that word, because some faculty seem to use it as a cover for shirking their responsibilities to their students — or worse, as an excuse for being actively hostile.

We cannot allow incorrect assertions of “rigor” to lower our intellectual standards to that of our most incompetent instructors. Students should advocate for higher standards.

So far in my experience the students actually seem fine with the instructors and TAs, but are complaining that 400 pages of reading over the course of half a semester is too much. They complain that the reading is repeating the lecture material and is a waste of time, or that the papers we are reading are dated(despite the concepts still holding true). By rigor, I don't mean busy work, I mean students don't have the attention span to sit down for any length of period and execute on the material they need to learn. They don't want to study for "useless exams" and don't seem to want to be assessed on anything really.