One thing that should be mentioned is that many students do not study very much is because they have jobs.
J. Devine On Dec 23, 2011 2:27 PM, "Sandwichman" <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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