Academically Adrift
A statistical analysis of survey responses, transcript data, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment to determine how well students learn during their first few years of college. The analysis shows almost half the students surveyed show no significant improvement in skills such as critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. The analysis goes on to consider possible causes for this educational shortfall.
Stats for nerds
0recommend
15mentions
9people
2011–2022years
93% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > [S]chool inculcates many attitudes that, regardless of their moral worth, impede on-the-job success. If you’re preparing kids for their adult roles, a year of work experience instills more suitable discipline and socialization than a year of school.
> The imperfect overlap between the school ethic and the work ethic is especially blatant in modern American colleges. Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job. The typical student spent 40 hours a week in class or studying.98 Since the early 1960s, effort collapsed across the board. “Full-time” college students average 27 hours of academic work per week—and only 14 hours of studying. (...)
> What are students doing with their extra free time? Having fun. Instead of being socialized for lives of boring work in hierarchical organizations, they’re being socialized for lives of play and self-expression. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa frostily remark in their Academically Adrift:
>> If we presume that students are sleeping eight hours a night, which is a generous assumption given their tardiness and at times disheveled appearance in early morning classes, that leaves 85 hours a week for other activities. . . . What is this additional time spent on? It seems to be spent mostly on socializing and recreation.
> A week in modern college is a great way to teach students that life is a picnic:
>> A recent study of University of California undergraduates reported that while students spent thirteen hours a week studying, they also spent twelve hours socializing with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies, and three hours on other forms of entertainment.
> Instead of making students conform and submit, college showers students with acceptance. This doesn’t merely fail to prepare students for their future roles; it actively unprepares them. College raises students’ expectations to unrealistic heights, leaving future employers the chore of dragging graduates back down to earth.
His book discusses your other points too, I strongly recommend it.
- > those who were underperforming weren’t struggling with the fundamental concepts in the class, but with algebra: the problems were caused by not having an intuitive understanding of, for example, the difference between f(x+a) and f(x)+a.
Those taking that class have spent years trying to learn algebra and still don't get it so we are already trying this.
> I’m no great teacher, but I was able to get all but one of the office hour regulars up to speed over the course of the semester.
Most likely they just memorized the new algebra rules as well. There are lots of studies showing how hard it is to teach students anything tangible, instead most will just try to memorize everything you say.
See for example: https://www.amazon.com/Academically-Adrift-Limited-Learning-...
- Your contribution is very interesting : it shows how little a diploma (a.k.a. "education") has to do with any kind of ability to produce anything useful.
http://oxrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/4/475.abstract
http://oxrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/4/538.abstract
http://ner.sagepub.com/content/224/1/R29.abstract
https://newrepublic.com/article/124943/america-overeducation...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/03043932949...
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/lpritch/Education%20-%20docs/...
http://repec.iza.org/dp5401.pdf
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/news/records/2013/December/Differ...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289605...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2862754
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2016/11/01/are-we-still-goi...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_l...
https://www.amazon.com/Academically-Adrift-Limited-Learning-...
http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/21-myths-th...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/06/federal-stud...
http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2016/11/01/are-we-still-goi...
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-12-31/research-...
http://economics.mit.edu/files/10414
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162505...
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19895
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/upshot/how-to-improve-grad...
http://hechingerreport.org/how-often-do-community-college-st...
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/05/28/half-of-co...
- College - indeed all formal educations - isn't free. It never has been. Someone has always paid. Someone always will. There needs to be a good return on investment for all parties involved. That includes the taxpayer, if she is footing the bill.
The difficult truth is that not every student has the prerequisite skills, ability, and self-discipline to complete university level work. Do you really expect the taxpayer to subsidize remedial courses at the university if the student couldn't acquire the prerequisite skills at the secondary level? Here in New York, despite record per pupil primary and secondary school expenditures, student performance has continued to drop. Why should taxpayers be forced to continue to subsidize poor performers? Those who want to do so are always free to contribute to scholarships.
Now let's consider student performance at the university level. Take a look at, for example, Richard Arum's book Academically Adrift. He notes that a large fraction of students graduate with very limited critical thinking and reasoning skills. This is because very little was demanded of them. As Arum so aptly put it, instead "they provided beer and circuses." The schools were paid for this...
Much of this outcome was produced because schools were paid (typically because of easily-obtained government subsidized loans). These students have not been so pleased when saddled with all the debt later on. Surprise: it is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Talk about the "gift that keeps on giving..."
Now ask, How is "free college" going to provide return to the taxpayers if the students don't have significant "skin in the game"? How will you ensure this?
Matters have been exacerbated by what we call "rampant credentialism." Those who make hiring decisions love this because it provides a way to screen candidates without getting sued. Is there really sufficient demand for workers with all these credentials to pay to produce them all? I don't think so.
I have watched the "great sucking sound" predicted by Ross Perot as jobs were offshored. This now includes those STEM jobs Americans want. I know. I have one. When I started work almost 35 years ago I was in an analytical division of a major corporation that had over 300 scientists and technicians. There are 27 of us left. The major scientific societies have noted demand is weak and salaries are flat at best and appear to be declining.
Are all these new graduates going to be able to find employment at a salary where their taxes repay the public investment? I don't think so. It is one thing if a system is designed where people can freely contribute to provide such education. It is another matter entirely to do this by force of tax law without regard for return on investment. What gives any of you the right to force this on another? Who died and made you despot?
Finally, let me return to the one who has proposed "free college." What has Sen. Sanders really produced in his lifetime? How many such successful programs has he run? What has he really done?
- One example is Germany. I was talking with a German friend of mine at lunch and he noted that they are "tracked" after grade 8. Some go to trade school. Then (IIRC) there are two university tracks - one more prestigious (and more stressful) than the other. The egalitarians in the US would never stand for this.
That said, we cannot continue to fund the system we have which according to R. Arum's Academically Adrift, leaves many students with a mountain of debt and few marketable skills. As the authors of "Paying for the Party" note, these students had a great time but learned little. Both books (and Arum's follow up book tracking graduates) are sobering reads...
- Yeah, Murray Sperber called it the “faculty-student non-aggression pact" - “Professors don’t ask much of their students and students don’t ask much of their professors".
And a newer book called "Academically Adrift" found that students aren't learning much in college.
How do they get away with all this? One explanation is the signaling theory of education. A degree (and the prestige/selectivity/reputation of the school and program) is a proxy (signal) for IQ plus an indicator of persistence (toughing it out to make it through a degree program).
