A brief excerpt from Treating Our Students as Adults by Judith L. Gersting and Frank H. Young, Inroads — The SIGCSE Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 2, June 2003.

What are the implications of treating students as adults?  In your conversations do you refer to your students as "kids" or do you use terms that more appropriately describe adults?  In your course syllabus and grading information, do you make absolutely clear what is expected of the students?  Do you hold your students to high standards, including deadlines for assignments?  Do you clearly covey your standards regarding honesty and cheating, and impose consequences for violations?  Do you admit when you do not know the answer to a question?  Do you ask students themselves to find the answer to a question?  Do you expect students to come to class prepared, are they aware of this expectation, and are there consequences if they do not fulfill this expectation?  How many times have we heard colleagues explain away inappropriate behavior by calling the perpetrators "immature students" — uttering that phrase almost as if it were a single word?  Immature students do not become mature students if we excuse their behavior.  Of course, we are not advocating that you become a martinet in your classroom — far from it.  Part of treating students as adults is maintaining an openness and a respectful relationship that will invite them to come to your office, discuss their problems (both academic and personal), and allow for exceptional circumstances to be treated in a fair and kindly manner.

If we treat our students as adults then we may very well be their next-to-last teachers.  There is the very real possibility that they will learn to be their own teachers.  That, in the final analysis, is what adulthood is really about.