<p>BB - I think you make a good point about the need for preparation - there needs to be a stronger emphasis on math and English literacy for college entrance. I can't help thinking about how parents and students are moaning and groaning so much about the compulsory SAT writing section - especially when it is clear that there is a serious problem with student literacy. If students are motiviated and prepared they will want to get the most out of college and will spend the time to learn. Too many distractions at college (which may be the first time many of these kids are out and on their own) can be a problem since all too many students go on to college without a clear idea of what they want to get out of the "college experience". Certainly, these days many students probably look at this time in their lives as a 4 year interlude before they have to come down to earth and get a job. I don't think this is a problem that can be easily tossed off and chalked up to "slackers" though. We had an incredibly tough math teacher at our high school who recently retired after teaching for over 30 years. She continually commented that over the last 15 years or so she noticed a clear and steady erosion of study habits, motivation and preparedness. My kids' hs routinely gives a heavy homework load every night (including long and short written assignments) and it takes its toll - it soon becomes clear which kids either can't or won't put in the work. The ones that do the work invariably apply to and get accepted to well-regarded American colleges. Many of these able students, when asked about college life will go on and on endlessly about trips, vacations, concerts, parties etc. but very few will launch into a passionate conversation about academics - a sad sign of the times, I suppose.</p>
<p>fendrock, thanks for posting the link to the parent cafe thread - if fits in perfectly with Leef's position paper. I agree that the main point under the microscope here is the issue of a prevailing student culture and Leef is also not "speaking of classes that weren't intellectually challenging (they were)" -- but "observing students who weren't interested in spending time being intellectually challenged." Leef does have a clear agenda (the thread on the "Overselling of American Education" makes that quite clear) and he interprets the NSSE study results to fully support his view that a college education is not and should not be for everyone. </p>
<p>The following is from "The Black Hole of Higher Education" (August 2000).</p>
<p>"Too many students"</p>
<p>"In the movie Amadeus, the emperor of Austria complains to Mozart that a piece of his has too many notes just too many notes. Mozart knew how to write music, and he certainly did not have too many notes. Government in the United States, however, has put too many students in college. The governments egalitarian policy of trying to give everyone access to higher education through low tuition and financial aid has opened the doors to throngs of students far more than would probably have attended if they had had to bear the cost without subsidization. At the same time, it has weakened standards.</p>
<p>Many college professors privately lament the problems caused by the presence of large numbers of students who are that in name only. Some have even had the nerve to speak out. A book well worth reading is Generation X Goes to College by Peter Sacks, in which the author explains how he was driven to make his courses intellectually vapid, easy, and entertaining in order to improve his student evaluations and keep his job. On many campuses, the indifferent student who wants only to get a degree with the least possible effort is the norm, and the pressure to appease students has led to a decline in academic standards that adversely affects the serious students.</p>
<p>Professor Paul Trout of Montana State University calls those indifferent students disengaged students, and describes them as follows:</p>
<pre><code>They do not read the assigned books; they expect high grades for mediocre work; they complain about course workloads; they regard intellectual pursuits as boring; they resent the intrusion of course requirements on their time; they are apathetic or defeatist in the face of challenge; and they are largely indifferent to anything resembling an intellectual life.
</code></pre>
<p>Our government education system has always produced a large number of people who have neither the interest nor the ability to do college-level work, and its imploding standards are increasing those numbers each year. In the days before nearly universal access to higher education, poorly educated high schoolers simply got jobs, or if they tried college, they probably flunked out. But things have changed. Driven by the belief that everyone should go to college, politicians and university officials have lowered both costs and standards to the point where virtually everyone who has the slightest desire to attend college can.</p>
<p>There are still islands of excellence in higher education, but they are surrounded by and eroding into an ocean of mediocrity."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fff.org/freedom/0800e.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.fff.org/freedom/0800e.asp</a></p>
<p>katonahmom, my impression is that there have been students at college to party as long as there have been colleges at which to party.</p>
<p>And, of course, there are many students who are intellectually capable of doing college level work but prefer to spend their time in ways they find more enjoyable.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to know how many students flunk out of college, and if the percentage has been decreasing over time.</p>
<p>A better question, IMO, is how many of those "disengaged" college students were also disengaged in HS, or even earlier. I submit that the disengagement starts much earlier than with HS senior-itis, Los Angeles Unified has a 50% dropout rate; however, these kids became educationally lost in middle school.</p>
<p>The sad fact about any discussion of disengagement or poor educational performance at any level is the expectation that schools can somehow inspire and are responsible to overcome these problems. Many college students just aren't that interested and aren't willing to work hard.</p>
<p>This thread articulates many of the reasons I PUSHED my D (yes PUSHED!) to attend (1) a LAC and (2) the most selective/academically rigorous institution she could possibly finagle her way into.</p>
<p>At her top-20 LAC, virtually all her classes are 20-kid discussion-oriented classes... many have fewer than 15 kids. NO WAY can you come unprepared to a tiny discussion seminar-- because you can't participate! </p>
<p>Judging on SAT scores alone, she's a tick below median for her school. The pressure to keep up with her accomplished peers, many of whom arrived at college more intellectually directed than she, has been motivating and inspiring. (When I consoled her over a C grade, she replied, "Mom, you don't understand. Kids at _____ don't GET C's!") </p>
<p>Thanks to a small discussion-based format, she got an 87 in a physics class! My D is as ungifted in sciences as Cur's D is gifted, so we were flabbergasted. (BTW that class required a 20 page research paper.) </p>
<p>The one huge lecture class she took resulted in her worst grade, a C-. I am convinced she processes information much better through discussion and questions than through reading/lectures. If this is your instinct about your kid, guide them towards LACs.</p>
<p>My D arrived at college with no idea what to study. She now has a double major in mind, with a strong emphasis in a third area. She is AFIRE! It is so exciting! She has been tapped for an on-campus (paid!) job by one prof in one of her two majors. She is bubbling over about what she's been reading. It is everything we dreamed of.</p>
<p>Finally, her school has very little grade inflation. She must work hard for Bs. (I have read "B" papers she wrote and ruefully though they might well have received a "As" at my Ivy alma mater.) When kids cannot "walk through" a class, they are forced to work. This system has proved very beneficial for my D.</p>
<p>Finally, she is having PLENTY of fun. All in all I'm with cheers; best $ I ever spent.</p>
<p>Cheers, peace! I think the debate should more properly be elite colleges, or maybe high achieving colleges, versus the rest? </p>
<p>It is interesting to think about where one would separate the schools that allow one to slide by from those that expect serious work, if you could separate them. Initially I would think selectivity might be a way. Then I realize that one of the most selective in the country, Harvard, has a reputation for a lot of students that are sliding by. Cost? No way, as we know. Public/private? Not when you have publics like U. Va, U. Mich and Berkeley. Compare them to, say, Vandy (or some other fun loving selective private school? Maybe Vandy is not a good comparison, but you get the idea.)</p>
<p>But I know that there are schools where the students are highly engaged. I just don't know of any broad criteria that separate them out.</p>
<p>There was a list I saw, done by (I think) Boalt Law school, that correlated GPAs and LSATs to determine which schools did NOT have grade inflation. The idea was that schools where high-LSAT kids had low GPAs were NOT grade-inflated.</p>
<p>When we were kids (back when dinosaurs watched black-and-white television), plenty of capable, bright kids of normal intelligence didn't go to college -- because they didn't like school and they felt there were plenty of other options available.</p>
<p>Today, the equivalent kids go to college. It has become the nearly universal experience for 18-year-olds.</p>
<p>Why are we surprised that so many aren't academically focused? There really aren't all that many true intellectuals in the world. The higher the proportion of kids who go to college, the lower the proportion of such people among college students.</p>
<p>NMD:
Harvard may have that reputation, but S is not finding it so. Two sets of problem sets every week--and penalties for turning work in late, including zero score. In other courses, he has response papers, midterms, etc...
I suppose if students refuse to attend weekly sections or turn in their response papers, there's nothing much a prof can do besides flunking the student.</p>
<p>What Harvard students are known for is for b...s.....ing their way through discussion sections in the humanities or social sciences because they've not done the reading but are still smart enough to get away with it. Then they spend the Christmas vacation cramming like mad.</p>
<p>This may be related to the assignment of shorter but more frequent papers. When papers were due at the end of the reading period, there was little incentive for the dedicated slackers to do their reading assignments.</p>
<p>Maybe one of the reasons is that by the time they get to college, they're just plain tired of doing work all the time? I know when I was in high school, it seemed like the entire point of going to school every day and choosing after school activities and whatnot was to get into college, not to actually spend your free time enjoyably or learn for the sake of learning. Until the beginning of senior year, you spent your entire time building the foundation for the perfect college application, and then you spent the first half of your senior year assembling that application and the second half waiting for the results of it to come back. It's all very single-minded and doesn't have much to do with being intellectual. And at the end, your reward for all that hard work is........to do yet more work, except this time there's usually no overarching reason to make yourself appear to be the perfect student.</p>
<p>I also kind of thing that the whole 3 hours of homework to 1 credit hour expectation is a little off. For most of my classes, I just can't figure out how you'd find 9 hours of stuff to do every week, in addition to the 3 hours of whatever you did in class. I have classes where it's even a struggle to find 2 hours' worth of stuff to do outside of class, and on the other hand I've had classes where we probably did 30 hours per week outside of class. I also don't see a big loss in not having ever written a 20-page research paper...it's not exactly a skill I'll need later in life, and longer chunks of writing do not necessarily equal better chunks of writing.</p>
<p>cur...what I meant to say is that there is more than one way to skin the ranch cat. Your D and SB's D may love small seminar classes, but my son-- for freshman and sophomore year anyway--prefered to sit in a big lecture course with a fantabulous speaker rather than listen to his peers babble on inside the classroom. Outside the classroom is another matter. He's happy to delve into the babbling in an informal setting. He's a world class babbler outside the classroom.</p>
<p>Likewise with professors--your D may love it but not every kid is wired that way. My son is an Authority Avoider from way back. He's never pursued adult relationships even though we are remarkably close to him. marite happened to recommend a scholar at his university--who turned out to be his dang advisor!! After marite told us that the fellow is a leading scholar in the field, son decided to push past the intimidating facade with a series of emails.</p>
<p>Mind you, he sat around a Harkness table with 15 kids and amazing MA/Phd teachers from the age of 12 to 15 1/2. It wasn't his favorite experience and when I went in for Parent's day, I figured it out. The most naive and least insightful kids did most of the talking. What a waste of an hour! I wanted to pull my fingernails out. He wasn't happy to relive that experience again in freshman and sophomore year. As he gets older and takes more and more 500 and 600 level classes with students who know a fair bit about the subject, I think the seminar will finally interest him.</p>
<p>Anyway, my point was that a 20 page paper is not necessarily a good threshold to use for judging the under-20 set. 5 to 9 page research and opinion papers are perfect exercises for any under-20 year old. I'd read a short paper any day because there would be half a chance I would be impressed. Heck, my 17 year old writes some great short papers. I love his writing voice and he is able to provide one or two interesting insights.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is interesting to think about where one would separate the schools that allow one to slide by from those that expect serious work, if you could separate them. Initially I would think selectivity might be a way. Then I realize that one of the most selective in the country, Harvard, has a reputation for a lot of students that are sliding by. Cost? No way, as we know. Public/private? Not when you have publics like U. Va, U. Mich and Berkeley. Compare them to, say, Vandy (or some other fun loving selective private school? Maybe Vandy is not a good comparison, but you get the idea.)
[/quote]
Gee, thanks for the blood pressure jolt. I strenuously disagree with the notion that Vandy is a selective school that "might allow one to slide by" as opposed to being a school that might "expect serious work." newmassdad, would you mind sharing why you pulled Vanderbilt out of that particular, um, hat?</p>
<p>I ask because I have a real live Vanderbilt student in the room at this very moment who, when I happened upon this thread, was flummoxed to learn the results of the NSSE study and laughed out loud at the notion of students doing so little work. She estimates her workload to be perhaps 35 hours per week, with 7 5-15 page papers this semester and numerous shorter papers for a reading-intensive Shakespeare course. Fine, that's anecdotal and doesn't mean much - but I know several additional Vanderbilt students with similar workloads. How many do you know? </p>
<p>I'd truly like to learn where the impression that Vanderbilt is somehow a less demanding academic environment comes from. Is it because 30 percent of male students and 50 percent of female students are Greek? That means, of course, that a clear majority of men and an equal number of women are not Greek - and their influence is felt on campus, as well. Check out their student profile - do you really think that kids that bright are sliding by?</p>
<p>"Maybe Vandy is not a good comparison ..." Nope. It's not.</p>
<p>If you click on the link in the original post, you can read the actual study. It's interesting to see what schools did not participate - none of the Ivies, for instance, nor MIT, Chicago, Northwestern, Hopkins, Amherst, Swarthmore (Williams did participate). So many of the school one would expect to have heavy workloads did not report.</p>
<p>I thought that the story between the lines of the article was interesting, too: colleges are increasingly using instruments that measure results and student outcomes (rather than what's coming in the door, via SAT scores, GPA etc.) As more such data becomes public--and some institutions are already releasing their figures--USNews and similar rankings are going to make for much less interesting reading; that will be a sea change and a positive one.</p>
<p>At my son's school (not in survey) students seem to spend much more time than the survey reports. Son spends at least 3hrs. per hour of credit. Papers are numerous, though most are short--believe longer ones ranged 10-15 pages with majority of papers being 5-8 pages. It is rare for him to have a week without at least one or two papers due.</p>
<p>Comparing his work load to experience of H. and myself as undergrads--son's is much, much more intensive. Son and husband even have same major (at least at this point).</p>
<p>US News has made available the results of the NSSE for a large number of participating institutions:</p>
<p>The survey not only asks seniors how many 20 pages papers they have written but also how many between 5 ande 19 and how many feweer than five. In addition, it addresses things like:</p>
<p>How often have you discussed ideas from readings or classes with faculty outside of class? Have you done a research project with a faculty member outside a course requirement? How many hours do you spend in a typical week preparing for class? What best describes your relationship with faculty members: unsupportive/sense of alienation to supportive/sense of belonging (scale of 1-7)? And much more.</p>
<p>I’ll refrain from commenting on individual institutions, but I’ve been looking at the stats for LACs, D’s interest, and one school that I was initially impressed with has really taken a nosedive in my estimation. There are a few schools—mostly those with anecdotal reputations for academic quality—that get strong confirmation that the word on the street is deserved, along with a few surprises. Fascinating reading!</p>
<p>
[quote]
The survey not only asks seniors how many 20 pages papers
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The link seems to be broken.</p>
<p>It must depend on the major, no? I looked up an MIT Ph.D.'s math dissertation and saw that is was 30 pages long. A social sciences dissertation probably runs in the 300-400 pages range. Science math majors will have plenty of problem tests but will take a few humanities/social science courses to fulfill their gen ed requirements. I doubt that many of these will have 20 page requirements. As well, more profs assign more but shorter papers these days.</p>
<p>When I was in college, the concept of "response paper" seemed to be alien. Now it's a fairly standard way of checking that students have done the reading and that they can write in paragraphs.</p>
<p>MM88, thanks for the link.</p>
<p>For those considering downloading the files, here is the list of LACS who shared their results:</p>
<p>Agnes Scott
Alma
Beloit
College of Wooster
Cornell College
Earlham
Eastern Mennonite Univ
Eckerd
Evergreen State
Franklin & Marshall
Hartwick
Hobart William Smith
Hollins
Hope
Lewis & Clark
Marlboro
Mass College of Liberal Arts
Monmouth
Morehouse
Muhlenberg
New College of Florida
Pitzer
Presbyterian
Randolph-Macon
Sewanee
St. Andrews Presbyterian
UNC-Asheville
Univ of Richmond
Ursinus
Westminster (MO)</p>
<p>Here is the list of National Universities:</p>
<p>Catholic Univ of America
DePaul
Idaho State
Jackson State
Kansas State
NJ Int of Tech
NM State
Nova Southeastern (FL)
Pace
Purdue
U of Akron
U of Alabama
U Conn
U of Dayton
U of Denver
U of Hawaii - Mano
U Mass Boston
U of MO - KC
U of Nebraska
U of San Fran
U of South Dakota
U of Texas - Arlington
U of Texas - El Paso
Virginia Comm Univ
Widener (PA)</p>
<p>20 pages seems like a random threshold. In my undergrad classes, my frosh-soph years was spent at a CC (altough a very good one), so papers were closer to 5 pgs in length. For junior-senior years, though, my history classes required 3-4 papers of 10-15 pages each, with heavy research on each. I also had a senior thesis which was required 30 pgs. in length. As the article said, they didn't ask about the research levels required in each paper, which to me signifies much more than the page length. I know my thesis, as well as every other paper I did, was mostly taken from primary sources and had a bibliography of over 300 sources.</p>