@feld You might be mistaking me for someone I am not.
I am not an academic, and the folks I work with are a trade school for young would-be professional developers, not academics.
The student care team -- also not academics -- is concerned that the quality of the students' work has rapidly declined year-on-year. In their view, the students are not making things, or making them as well as they did. And they they are not making them work, or making them work as well as they did.