<p>Look at the first-year curriculum at a university or college. If it has huge lecture classes, has TA's doing much of the teaching, and courses with names that add up to English 100, Math 100, History 100, and Social Studies 100, run for the hills. You're repeating what you should've learned in high school. If the institution doesn't haven't students writing at least one 10-20 page paper a week (on average) enroll at a school that does. If class participation and intellectual discussion is easily avoidable, avoid that so-called institution of higher learning and go elsewhere.</p>
<p>College should teach students how to think not memorize.</p>
<p>While I agree that in general, more students may learn more higher-level thinking skills at smaller liberal arts colleges, that is no necessarily the conclusion of the article. First of all, the sensational headline is just plain wrong - 45% of students have not shown measurable changes in critical thinking or complex reasoning AFTER THEIR SOPHOMORE YEAR. That number is reduced to 36% by the time students graduate. Of course, the headline, “64% of College Students Show Evidence of Increased Learning Skills” is not going to generate nearly as many page clicks.</p>
<p>While the article points out that many college-level courses are not sufficiently rigorous, it also points out that the main reasons why students do not learn more complex reasoning skills have more to do with poor study habits and course selection, as opposed to an overall lack of rigor at universities.</p>
<p>I have taught at several colleges and universities over 25 years, with class sizes ranging from 15 to 750, and I can tell you that I and most other educators work hard to incorporate higher-order thinking into our coursework. However, pretty much any educator will express some level of frustration with the results of those efforts. A significant fraction of students (maybe 36%!) do not seem capable of addressing test questions or assignments that require more complex reasoning skills, such as synthesis, analysis, application and evaluation (to use the commonly referred-to terms in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Higher-Order Thinking Skills). I would also add that such skills are hard to teach, and also hard to measure.</p>
<p>Finally, while I think that it should be the goal of all higher-education institutions to develop higher-order thinking skills in their students, the other goal is to impart a body of knowledge. Some students may graduate after learning a large body of knowledge, yet have not developed additional higher-level thinking skills. That is unfortunate, but those students still ‘know’ something that will allow them to be more functional and successful members of their community. So, those students learned something, and might even be pleased with what they learned.</p>
<p>The cited study is quite interesting, but I think we should not necessarily look to the Huffington Post to supply the analysis of the study results. Or, at least the Associated Press that was recycled by the Huffington Post.</p>
<p>My son isn’t at an LAC (smallish university) and his courses don’t look like this. He’s taking a colloquium style course that has had multiple 20 page papers and exams that require real learning and analysis. He’s taking a freshman writing course that requires frequent shorter papers. He’s taking Arabic, no papers, but it’s a small class. No higher order thinking in that course, but I think foreign language acquisition is important and stretches your brains in other ways. And finally he’s taking an intro Econ course - which is fairly large and his break out sections weren’t great. It was the only disappointing course, but it was required for his major. I think too many students just choose stupidly.</p>
<p>I hear you ALF. But I have a kid in a widely respected flagship state U that is probably in the tier just below the four or five “public ivies.” And I have a kid at a top LAC. The former took freshman courses like 90% of other freshmen, because only a tiny number are in the Honors College, called English, Math, History, etc. etc., basically repeats of high school, which is exactly what a couple of kids quoted in the article say is their experience. I don’t blame the professors. That’s what they are told to teach, and some are quite good. But when the number of students is huge and the curriculum “standardized” there is only so much the prof can do.</p>
<p>My other kid was hit immediately as a frosh with daily intellectual discussion in small classes and a dozen 10 - 20 page and longer mandatory papers (my public school kid MIGHT have to write a dozen 3 -5 page papers in her entire four years). She even found herself in small tough classes in which she was the only freshman. Class participation is not an option. And her courses anything but a repeat of high school. </p>
<p>Yes, I’m paying through the nose for my LAC kid, and it hurts, but my impression is that one is getting a significantly more challenging and interesting education than the other, and both are social science majors.</p>
<p>I am a proud alum of my state’s big State U and its law school. However, I agree 100% with Plainsman. I think that it is not that LACs do the same thing better, they do a different thing. Big State U’s are in the business of information delivery, not teaching critical reading, writing and thinking skills. My wife teaches at a State U, and she and her colleagues will tell you that it is impossible to teach those skills with classes of 100 or 125 or larger. There was an article in the NY Times a little while ago about the growth of on-line classes for students attending big State U’s–classes of 1500, where the students never leaves their dorm room to attend, the tests have to be short answer that can be done in 10 minutes or less to avoid having kids cheat. This is the 500 student lecture taken to the next level. Raises the question of why bother being at the campus, it seems like college becomes about the living and playing rather than the education. I think LACs are less about teaching the content, more about teaching those critical skills. My experience is that it is the critical thinking skills that really set people apart. I also and and will be paying through the nose to send my 4 kids to LACs, and believe that it is worth every penny.</p>
<p>Hopefully students are taught to think long before they go off to college or university.</p>
<p>I had one attend a large Flagship OOs, and my second is in a rigorous LAC. Both had small classes. The older one had only one class of more than 30 in all 3 years he was there (studied abroad the other).</p>
<p>Taking nothing away from LACs, there are several paths to developing critical thinking skills. For example, in the engineering field one can look at a disciplines like [Systems</a> Analysis](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis]Systems”>Systems analysis - Wikipedia) which offer skills that are translatable beyond a technical environment. </p>
<p>Another example, in the study of Artificial Intelligence philosophy and logic are foundational components of the discipline.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Why are 10-20 page papers an absolute positive? Where’s the brightline on when a paper is long enough?</p></li>
<li><p>If you learned it in high school, why didn’t you pass an AP exam and earn college credit for it?</p></li>
<li><p>If students are troubled by a lack of rigor, why don’t they try to take different courses or complete out-of-class assignments? If not, isn’t that the problem?</p></li>
<li><p>Can students be forced to develop critical thinking skills?</p></li>
<li><p>Is the Collegiate Learning Assessment a legitimate measure of anything of value to a student?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“If the institution doesn’t haven’t students writing at least one 10-20 page paper a week (on average) enroll at a school that does.”</p>
<p>My big problem is this sentence. Is that a joke? I go to a pretty decent LAC, and I still only get only a paper or two of that length a semester. You don’t learn enough anywhere to write a 10-page paper each week. Unless you’re proposing stream-of-conscious papers. A lot of writing is good, yes. That sentence just alarmed me.</p>
<p>I’m also not sure to whom you’re trying to sell LACs. Individual parents here probably already know the benefits. As a system nationwide, colleges are meant to process many students as the demand for college education is so huge. The standards really can’t be as high and they don’t have the resources for small classes for everyone. Most students also don’t have the money to go to LACs, and a lot of kids can’t cut it with that level of rigor. It’s not for everyone.</p>
<p>One of the authors of the study, and writers of the book, “Academically Adrift”, is Prof. Richard Arum of NYU. He has refused to name the 24 institutions used in the study. He has also not been drawn into the silly debate between LAC’s and universities. The most interesting points of the study are: (1) students who study alone rather than with peer groups learn more; (2) participation in Greek life on campus is negatively correlated to learning; (3) College students do not study as much as they did before 1960. Current students are into recreation, placing more emphasis on social engagements than academic engagements; (4) The gap in learning between blacks and whites widens even in college. Of all the ethnic/racial groups in the study, blacks gain the least in learning; (5) Colleges need to spend more time integrating students into academic endeavors rather than the clubs and organizations they promote on their brochures; (6) Learning increases with professors with high expecations and in courses that require both reading and writing; and (7) Course evaluations at the end of a semester are useless instruments in measuring learning. In fact, “easy” professors with low demands are consistently rated higher.</p>
<p>Plainsman, I have a child in a top LAC and one at one of the “public Ivies.” I’ll have to say, the one at the U has had as many small seminar classes the first year. His big classes are much larger but they do smaller break-outs with TA’s. Some of the TA’s are not great, but some are better than the profs. So far, he has had a pretty good education, but he has to work harder at finding a good class. At least, he can place out of most of the 100 level classes with AP’s and doesn’t need to repeat HS stuff. Yes, I think D’s education is better.</p>
<p>And in the rush to defend the college choices our children made, will we continue to deny that a third of our students showing no gains in critical thinking is a problem? What’ I’m reading is a lot of, "Well, not here, certainly by maybe somewhere else . . . " I don’t think the problem is somewhere else.</p>
<p>In the face of evidence to the contrary, our general response seems to be, not at the school MY kids attend. MY kids have to read, write papers, etc. We might want to rethink that.</p>
<p>Good grief, no. I’m merely pointing out that in the face of research, we rush to responses based on anecdotal evidence involving our own children. Personally, I’ve never been a “not my kid” parent, and as someone who works in higher ed think the study is right on. It’s not the first to make these kinds of claims. It is, however, one of the first to quantify.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree with the article, however Plainsman’s blanket extrapolation from it is not the experience D2 has had. The reason is probably here, from the article:</p>
<p>“Students who studied alone, read and wrote more, attended more selective schools and majored in traditional arts and sciences majors posted greater learning gains.”</p>
<p>It seems likely to me that selective schools find ways to cater to their constituencies, at least somewhat appropriately, whether they be LAC or university. D2 is at a selective university, studying in its Arts & Sciences college, and has been more challenged there, if one must compare, than at the LAC she previously attended.</p>
<p>The anecdote in no way runs counter to the article, just to Plainsman’s own extension/ spin on it.</p>