<p>"Nearly half of the nation's undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college, in large part because colleges don't make academics a priority, a new report shows.</p>
<p>Instructors tend to be more focused on their own faculty research than teaching younger students, who in turn are more tuned in to their social lives, according to the report, based on a book titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Findings are based on transcripts and surveys of more than 3,000 full-time traditional-age students on 29 campuses nationwide, along with their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that gauges students' critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills.</p>
<p>After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change."</p>
<p>One might question the return on investment, if this is true.</p>
<p>I have to think that this is on the students just as much as the colleges themselves. The kids have to want to learn.</p>
<p>Over 70% of high school graduates in the US attend college today, and that number is still rising. 50 years ago, that number was about 40%. Do you think this increase is caused by a genuine desire for learning? I don’t. I think that kids are expected to go to college after they graduate, so they do. They don’t go there to learn, they go because that’s where the railroad tracks lead.</p>
<p>Another possible contributor is the romanticizing of college in the mainstream media. It’s portrayed as this utopia where you go to get slammed and have sex with strangers every night. It makes for good TV to be sure, but it also makes kids who have no business being in college want to go.</p>
<p>I saw a lot of this in my high school class. I can’t think of a single classmate who genuinely wanted to go to college and learn. There were three general categories of students in my class: those who are going to college for the degree (and subsequently the job), the sheep, and the kids who want to spend 4 years partying on their parents’ dime.</p>
<p>Almost all of my first two years of college were review. It was preparation in terms of workload and quality expectations for higher level classes, if anything. I am not sure what I could have been expected to learn.</p>
<p>I find this study so misleading it is not even funny. </p>
<p>Critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills are all things that develop in most students by the time they are near completion of high school. Testing these things again after 2, 3, etc. years of college and expecting them to be radically different is preposterous. Compare high school seniors ACT or SAT scores with College juniors or Seniors who have taken the ACT or SAT recently…and I guarantee you, the gains are going to be minimal at best for most people (vs development of critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and writing are things that people get substantially better at from 7th through 12th grade). </p>
<p>What the study also fails to take into consideration is a college’s preparation for certain careers. You cannot be an engineer without a college degree anymore. You are not going to be a doctor or dentist without a zillion more years of schooling past high school. You may learn how to write, or analyze texts mostly in high school, but in college you generally learn how to write or analyze MORE. College writing exams only test the student’s ability to write an essay in a short amount of time. Given a week (or several) to write a truly analytic essay, a college student is generally going to be able to accomplish this task a lot more thoroughly. </p>
<p>Among other things, the study also fails to point out the fact that high school students more and more are taking college-prep curriculum (college courses in high school, AP classes, honors classes) that can help explain some of the lack of advancement. Particularly in the first 2 years of college, students are stuck taking Gen-ed courses that are are potentially very similar to what was expected of them in some AP courses. I feel like this study could make a better argument against Gen-eds for this reason than overall “first two years of college show small gains.” </p>
<p>I feel like this study is a great example of the misleading causation vs. correlation. This study assumes that the total amount of gains in learning at college causes scores in the Collegiate Learning Assessment to go up. While they may be correlated, what proves that the Collegiate Learning Assessment is able to measure all of the aspects that result in college learning and achievement? Absolutely nothing. </p>
<p>From personal experience, I have gained far more tangible knowledge than I ever could of imagined in my college experience (2 1/2 years+). I think this is in part because of the challenging nature of my residential college program, but also partially because of my drive and willingness to learn. Looking at my essays from high school to college, my writing has matured SIGNIFICANTLY. But to be honest? If I took the ACT/SAT again right now (the same test I took my high school junior year) my score would be about the same if not worse. Why is this the case? While the ACT or SAT is not exactly the same thing as the College achievement test that measures Critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills, it is pretty darn close. This is BECAUSE THE TEST ONLY MEASURES THE SKILL A PERSON HAS AT TAKING THE TEST IN QUESTION, IT TRULY DOES NOT MEASURE “THE AMOUNT STUDENTS LEARN IN THEIR FIRST TWO YEARS OF COLLEGE.” That is the bottom line.</p>
<p>Ultimately, college is what you make out of it. The sad part is you or your parents pay for all those years. Honestly, if you want to party for four years, why pay $20,000 a year to do it? Just go and have fun with the money you’re saving rather than graduate in five years with a worthless degree.</p>
<p>I believe that the whole idea of “college experience” is symptomatic. So many of my HS classmates went into college “for the experience” and so many of my college classmates talk about “the experience”. College is a school. It’s about learning. It’s not an extended vacation from reality, a social club, or place to “find yourself”. It’s a place to learn. Of course, the schools don’t want you to believe this. It’s easier to get tuition from 45% of your students and not even have to teach them anything!</p>
<p>I would advice against trusting statistical information without adequate references and personal examination of the results by the reader. Newspapers and many other media outlets need sensationalized stories to fill pages and time slots. For example, in that pie-chart, the results show that students spent an average of 7% of their time studying. This statistic is based on 3000 universities and colleges throughout the United States. Are all 3000 of those colleges/universities really credible? ( I.E. Does that include for profit colleges/universities?) What about the wide range of students? There are millions of students attending college and average statistics which use the mean (there are gigantic state universities with large class sizes and if the mean is used small LACs are “ignored” because large universities bring up the mean numbers).</p>
<p>Actually it is for a lot of people that are “set for life.” You’re in this protected place where you’re not an adult but you’re working towards becoming one. It’s just a different mindset I guess. Some kids grow up dreaming of what they’re going to do in high school and college and other kids dream about what they’re going to do after all of that.</p>
<p>For me, High shool was nothing more than an extension of elementary school, and my time in ARMY AIT was like the greatest time in my life that I’ll never forget. I was in Pensacola, Fl. on a Navy base going to school to learn how to do my military intelligence job. The navy has a higher quality of living than the army… we had suites instead of barracks… and we never had kitchen duty or fire guard because the Navy did all that.</p>
<p>Could this just be because a lot of students spend two years learning the basic stuff they were supposed to learn in HS, or because so many people take easy majors? By the end of my freshman year I had studied multivariable calc, chemistry, classical mechanics, and electricity and magnetism. I was head-and-shoulders above where I was before in terms of math and science understanding. Am I the only one spending their first two years taking real classes?</p>
<p>That is one of the biggest myths about our education system. We don’t produce thinkers or people who are skilled at writing. There are plenty of English professors out there who can’t put a sentence together, let alone English majors.</p>
<p>I didn’t get the impression that that was what she was saying. I think what she meant was that those are skills that are mostly developed by the time you reach that age, not that our education system really has anything to do with their development.</p>
<p>“Ultimately, college is what you make out of it. The sad part is you or your parents pay for all those years. Honestly, if you want to party for four years, why pay $20,000 a year to do it? Just go and have fun with the money you’re saving rather than graduate in five years with a worthless degree.”</p>
<p>Generally people cannot choose to go to not go to school or work. If a kid said to his parents “I don’t want to go to college, but I also don’t want to work, so can you just give me the money that you would spend on my college education so I can go blow it all?” he probably wouldn’t get it.</p>
<p>Vladenschlutte - that post actually made me laugh out loud. </p>
<p>In general, I’m skeptical only because of the testing methods that the article employed. I’m a freshman, and I’ve already learned a significant amount of math - especially calculus - just by taking Calc II and Multivariable, but if I re-took the SAT or ACT, my math scores probably wouldn’t have gotten any higher because these tests only test math up to the 9th grade level (if that) - that is to say, basic algebra and geometry. I highly doubt that they are indicative of “learning” in college if all that they measure are reasoning skills that most people learned in middle school.</p>
<p>I guess because I’m more of a math-science person I can’t say that my reading skills have “changed” too much, but I’d also argue that college teaches you how to think in a different way. One of the most important things I’ve learned so far is simple critical thinking skills - my cognitive science course, for example, more or less changed my entire views on how we think. I feel like the study was too general in its methods, and can’t honestly be used to predict the amount of actual learning that is occurring.</p>