I think this is all wrong.
For one thing, it is g rounded on an 'overestimation' of what "the
university" has been in the past. It is also, I supect, grounded in a false
epistemology: i.e. a false "standard" of what knowledge consists of. (We
won't even go into the deliberate farce of "standardized" testing.)
Academics and various categories of non-academic intellectuals try
unconconsciously for the most part to maintain a really farcical concept of
what "A University Education" _means_: they suppose quite absurdly that only
those who have matched their own 'cultural standards' should be granted
degrees. (Or if they are radical populists under the skin they will pretend
to themselves that it's only because of bad people in the university
administration and faculty that all students do not achieve this mythical
state.) It is neither academic practice nor "natural ability" that
determines what students learn. Note that the same people who don't even
attend college will carry an immense amount of knowledge - just not about
what the authors of this study (and those who view it with alarm) think is
"important" knowledge. It is clear that students for the most part always
have and have now a pretty good estimate of what they _need_ to know and
obtain that - no more. Some achieve narrow technical skills. Some achieve
just enough of this or that to get that piece of paper, knowing very well
that that is what they need on the job. ("ON" here means "to get.") Several
million people now have positions which before WW2 required only a High
School diploma. The current requirement of a BA or BS has nothing to do with
the knowledge "society" requires; they can get that on the job or it isn't
needed to begin with. The requirement for the degree is a political
requirement.
And if this is posted on a left e-mail list because it is supposed to get
leftists all hysterical about stupid students not understanding good
politics - relax. And anyhow, Sandwichman has been telling everyone who will
listen for years what workers (including students) need if they are to
become more politically educated: lots more free time.
Carrol
_____
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman
Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 4:27 PM
To: Progressive Economics
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Animal houses
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-ar
e-they-failing/
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