Shorter: The university has turned into a high school. On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote:
> In Academically Adrift, Arum and Roksa paint a chilling portrait of what > the university curriculum has become. The central evidence that the > authors deploy comes from the performance of 2,322 students on the > Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to > students in their first semester at university and again at the end of > their second year: not a multiple-choice exam, but an ingenious exercise > that requires students to read a set of documents on a fictional problem > in business or politics and write a memo advising an official on how to > respond to it. Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, a > self-assessment of student learning filled out by millions each year, > and recent ethnographies of student life provide a rich background. > > Their results are sobering. The Collegiate Learning Assessment reveals > that some 45 percent of students in the sample had made effectively no > progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in their > first two years. And a look at their academic experience helps to > explain why. Students reported spending twelve hours a week, on average, > studying—down from twenty-five hours per week in 1961 and twenty in > 1981. Half the students in the sample had not taken a course that > required more than twenty pages of writing in the previous semester, > while a third had not even taken a course that required as much as forty > pages a week of reading. > > Results varied to some extent. At every institution studied, from > research universities to small colleges, some students performed at high > levels, and some programs fostered more learning than others. In > general, though, two points come through with striking clarity. First, > traditional subjects and methods seem to retain their educational value. > Nowadays the liberal arts attract a far smaller proportion of students > than they did two generations ago. Still, those majoring in liberal arts > fields—humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and > mathematics—outperformed those studying business, communications, and > other new, practical majors on the CLA. And at a time when libraries and > classrooms across the country are being reconfigured to promote trendy > forms of collaborative learning, students who spent the most time > studying on their own outperformed those who worked mostly with others. > > Second, and more depressing: vast numbers of students come to university > with no particular interest in their courses and no sense of how these > might prepare them for future careers. The desire they cherish, Arum and > Roksa write, is to act out “cultural scripts of college life depicted in > popular movies such as Animal House (1978) and National Lampoon’s Van > Wilder (2002).” Academic studies don’t loom large on their mental maps > of the university. Even at the elite University of California, students > report that on average they spend “twelve hours [a week] socializing > with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching > television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies”—and thirteen > hours a week studying. > > For most of them, in the end, what the university offers is not skills > or knowledge but credentials: a diploma that signals employability and > basic work discipline. Those who manage to learn a lot often—though > happily not always—come from highly educated families and attend highly > selective colleges and universities. They are already members of an > economic and cultural elite. Our great, democratic university system has > become a pillar of social stability—a broken community many of whose > members drift through, learning little, only to return to the economic > and social box that they were born into. > > full: > > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities-why-are-they-failing/ > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Sandwichman
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