I'm shocked! Shocked! On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Sandwichman <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 > -- Sandwichman
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