A recent story in U.S. News and World Report highlighted a new book by sociology professors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" makes some startling claims:
- By the end of their second year in college, 45 percent of students had learned, well, not very much, over what they knew when they arrived.
- Thirty percent of college seniors were no better at writing or analysis than they were as freshmen.
- Students who did learn something didn't learn a lot of that something.
- In certain majors — education, sociology, communications and business — students performed worse than the average.
- Among the few positive areas were liberal arts, philosophy, economics, chemistry, biology and languages.
Don't all run out now and change your majors; there's more to this.
We all know that one can point the finger at any one of a hundred reasons why students are lagging in learning: lack of challenge, wimpy grading, underpaid and/or only part-time faculty; a focus on publishing vs. teaching for higher-paid faculty; the overwhelmingly popular and seductive social aspects of college life.
Here's a telling snippet of research: According to the book, 37 percent of college students got by with less than five hours a week of homework.
All those elements play a role in lackadaisical learning, but here's a question that doesn't get asked often enough: Why do students and, especially, paying parents keep paying for such low value?
A far more constructive national dialogue should begin with how and when, in what form, and on what terms parents and students should choose higher education.
The four-year model is well-entrenched, but what about strengthening the two-plus-two model, with a more robust emphasis on community colleges, or even a three-and-one model, with apprenticeship for three years and a fourth year of classroom for polishing off skills? Or one year in class, three in apprenticeship?
A Harvard University study published last week by the Pathways to Prosperity Project at the Graduate School of Education says a similar thing in so many words: There's too much emphasis in the U.S. on four-year bachelor's degrees, which only 30 percent of students complete.
What happens to those students who have paid but not finished? That money is gone, and many times they must start over, both in securing financing and accumulating credits.
Let's start devising a better plan, keeping creativity, personal talents and life and career goals front and center, but moving hype and historical educational models to the side.
Let's open pathways to the future along nontraditional roads and elevate our vocational and technical educations to professional level.
And let's start career conversations early, clearly delineating for high school students the paths that will take them to the careers they seek and then helping put them on those paths.
After all, we can't get where we need to go — as individuals or as a nation — if we start off on the wrong footing.
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