Test results–college impacts. https://www.wsj.com/articles/exclusive-test-data-many-colleges-fail-to-improve-critical-thinking-skills-1496686662
The link and article are not available to nonsubscribers.
(Meaning that no one who has good critical thinking skills but chooses not to subscribe to the WSJ is going to draw any conclusion whatsoever from the headline and 5 lines of visible text)
This study has a very flawed sample design. It compares test scores of freshmen in Fall of their first year with test scores of seniors in Spring of the same year. By not testing and retesting the same students in the first and last year of their enrollment, the study is greatly subject to sampling error. Are both the freshmen and the seniors who completed the tests perfectly random samples of their own classes? Even if they were, sampling error is likely to be substantial, and more so if the samples are relatively small.
Perhaps another issue is that in colleges with higher attrition rates, the seniors are going to be a more “selected” set of survivors, who would likely test better than a random cross-section of freshman at the same college. In contrast, in a college with very high 4 year graduation rates, the seniors are likely to be similar in background to the first-year students and thus appear to have progressed less in critical thinking than if many of the less able students had been weeded out.
I got out of college in 1983, and in all that time, I don’t recall any company I worked for complaining that they couldn’t find people with critical thinking skills. What they always complained about was not being able to find people with specific, job-related skills.
^ I am a lawyer, and complain about it all the time. That is probably an industry and job specific thing.
Definitely a flawed sample. I’m not surprised that the most “critical thinkers” come from smaller LACs. After all, isn’t that the purpose of a liberal arts degree as opposed to an industry-specific degree such as engineering? What would the results be if they studied critical thinking among specific majors at both LACs and large universities?
Huh? I didin’t see anything in the article about LACs.
And, btw. that statement itself is a ‘flawed sample’. Many LACs have a bunch of full pay students, at least in comparison to some of the publics mentioned in this article which can have a high Pell grant component.
Generally, the vast majority of students at a big Uni are in the Arts & Sciences college; engineering tends to be small since it is so costly. For example, 20,000 of the 29,000 undergrads at UC Berkeley are in the College of Letters & Sciences, which means that they have to take Distribution requirements outside of their field or major.
Wait, what?
If you click through to the article from the author’s Twitter link, you can read it: https://twitter.com/dougbelkin
(look at my problem solving skills!)
Also, there is an accompanying chart which appears to not be behind the paywall. https://graphics.wsj.com/table/THINKTEST_0510 - no LACs, no private colleges. Only public Us.And only 68 and some missing flagships (CSUs, no UCs, for instance). So a very weird sample for the rather sweeping conclusions made in the article.
It does say:
For some reason, the chart with the actual data doesn’t seem to be behind the pay wall. https://graphics.wsj.com/table/THINKTEST_0510
And I didn’t see any LACs on the list.
The WSJ is essential reading to any thinking person. One thing no one has noted is that the two schools with the highest initial scores (both very good flagships) had the highest final scores. They just did not improve much. Maybe there is a ceiling on this ability for most students. Even good students
No division or major at UCB is open curriculum; all undergraduate students must take breadth requirements.
UCB wasn’t even part of the study.
“The WSJ is essential reading to any thinking person.” - except maybe this article.
Or, perhaps there is a ceiling on the study design? 
And your point is?
Correct, but my post was in response to tutu mom’s in which she appears to infer that the liberal arts are (only?) taught in LACs. I just used a massive public Uni as an example to show that they too, teach liberal arts.
It was in response to your statement in #6 that implied that the UCB College of Letters and Science has breadth requirements but other divisions do not.
@bluebayou You missed my point. My point wasn’t that liberal arts are only taught at LACs, my point was that small LACs don’t generally offer a wide assortment of other degree programs that larger universities offer, and it’s why I thought it would be a better assessment to compare apples to apples, for example, English majors to English majors, rather than apples to the entire fruit basket.
@mackinaw is right a longitudinal study would be better. The largest question I have is how much college students try on a test, which they know won’t be used for anything.
I prefer “The Economist”.
Love the Economist, but it too, has plenty of biases. Some of the writers just love to look down on the former Colonies particularly wrt to higher education. My point is that their work lacks critical writing skills.