This Salon article is about a college anthropology professor who felt so disconnected from her students that she went undercover to study them. She came to what I'd have to call "well, duh" conclusions:

There is an awful lot of conversation about nonacademic, nonpolitical, nonphilosophical things, but I saw something very interesting also. Anyone who said they did have a philosophical conversation might qualify it, like, "Yeah, we were really drunk that night, so we got into all this deep philosophical stuff," or "Yeah, sometimes I get into this dorky mood and then I talk about deep topics." When you hear that as an anthropologist, you think the students are responding to a criticism that isn't even being made, that is in their head.

What do you mean? What's the criticism?

Students don't like to sound like they're trying too hard. That's what I would see in the pre-class conversations. You know, "How'd you do?" "Pretty good. I got an A, but I barely studied." Or "I did well, but it's amazing, because I thought I totally bombed this." You have to seem like [success] is effortless, or like you haven't put a lot of work into it. And that becomes part of the culture. I think a lot of students want to have [more substantial conversations], but they don't feel comfortable doing so.

Where did she go to school in the first place, and what planet were she and her fellow students on at the time? The scenario she describes sounds an awful lot like my college years at SUNY Albany, 1980-1984. Politics came up rarely, no one wanted to look like they were working hard, there was a lot of partying - I rather suspect that schools have been like this for a long time (with varying levels of open-ness about it over time). Heck, even in the supposedly political 60's, I would bet good money that most students spent more time ogling girls (or boys) than they did protesting.

Maybe it's not so much that the students have changed - and more that the professor hung around with an out of the mainstream group in college - and thus defined that experience as the norm.