Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011)

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much#sthash.xiIXcfgd.dpbs

by luu • 12 years ago

67 31 12 years ago

insidehighered.com

JBiserkov• 12 years ago

Q: Why is there so much knowledge in universities?

A: The freshman bring some in, if little; the graduates take away practically nothing; so it naturally accumulates there.

gshubert17• 12 years ago

[2011] -- but still interesting.

lmartel• 12 years ago

I think the most important data point here is the average of 12-14 hours spent studying per week, including "academic" socializing. Of course you're not going to accomplish much in that time; most employers would fire someone putting in twice that much time for slacking off.

The rhetoric for as long as I've been alive (I'm college-aged) has been "get a degree, get a degree" and as it turns out getting a degree isn't very hard. We need to either make it harder or somehow change the rhetoric to "learn something."

Swizec4• 12 years ago

That's usually 12-14 hours of studying on top of 30-40 hours of classes.

At least that's what's expected. What usually ended up happening for me was blowing off 30-40 hours of classes a week, doing some 10-20 hours of studying (including homework and such), and having a near full-time job. Then followed by some 15 hours of studying per day during exams.

But I never graduated. So that probably wasn't the best strategy. Although I did get a bunch of solid work experience in my field.

lmkg• 12 years ago

That's usually 12-14 hours of studying on top of 30-40 hours of classes.

That sounds like an extremely unusual balance of classes vs studying. An 'average' class-load is something like 12-18 credit-hours. That's supposed to mean 12-18 hours of in-class instruction per week. I'm quite curious how you ended up taking 30-40 hours of in-class instruction, and if that was normal compared to your peers.

I was told in orientation (in 2003) to expect 2-3 hours of outside work per classroom hour, and my experience matched that. If these students are facing the same expectations that I faced, then they're getting a 1:1 ratio of classroom:outside hours, which is underworking by a significant factor.

onetimeusename• 12 years ago

I am partial to trying to get people to "learn something". My belief is that when something is known as being hard, a teacher can get away with being mediocre or inept because bad ratings and students failing or low averages can be hand waived away as them not trying hard enough in the "hard" course. I also think the attitude that degree = more $ is at least partially to blame for less rigor. If people think this way then naturally just showing up to class and receiving the diploma are most important and if we are honest that might explain the existence of majors that are not rigorous at all like the ones mentioned.

watwut2• 12 years ago

14 hours a week is 2.8 hours a day (ignoring weekends) on top of classes you spend in school. We had at least 4 hours a day of lectures during first year. That amounts to 6.8 hours a day not counting countless hours during exams time. It is not that little given that most people are unable to focus fully without breaks, so they have to happen too. In addition, you do count unproductive time in work (pointless meeting, small talk with colleague) as a work time.

Most people can learn only so much withing a day and can focus only for so long. I would guess that 6.8 hours can be quite close to the point where your focus run out and you are bound to waste the additional time by staring on book (as opposed to learn from it).

Spooky232• 12 years ago

I guess I've become an old man. I can't think of a class where reading less than 40 pages of material and 20 pages of writing a semester or equivalent ever happened. Even "Intro to East Asian Cinema" required a grueling schedule of 2-3 movies a week plus multiple papers.

And I attended a mid-tier public university in the 90s!

bcaine• 12 years ago

I'd be curious how the study measured 40 pages of reading each week. My guess is that most, if not all of my classes (Computer Engineering student) have > 40 pages of reading associated with the topics taught each week, but for many of them the reading is never assigned, nor is it ever performed.

In my experience, reading only really is necessary when you are really confused on a topic from lecture, miss class, or have a terrible professor.

I'd assume its similar across a lot of STEM disciplines (with respect to not actually reading textbooks much).

Swizec4• 12 years ago

I don't know anyone who doesn't read the textbooks or at least the "condensed" slides version with some 500+ slides per class. Not in STEM not anywhere else. It is simply impossible to retain that much information just from going to class, you have to re-read it all before exams. Which is when the reading happens, nobody actually does the reading every week. That's just silly.

Man, I wish I went to uni in the US. Every time I hear anything about the US college experience it just sounds like a piece of cake.

pjmlp• 12 years ago

As Portuguese when reading these articles, I wonder how much of said US students would managed to go through the first years of our universities.

Assuming the same difficulty level as I had on the mid-90's as well.

tuke• 12 years ago

Before your accept this review at face value, read the book for yourself.

This review, like many, fails to note that the data in question regards first- and second-year students (i.e., the second sample is in the third semester -- only 1 1/2 years after starting college). Many of us will recall that we made our big leaps in our junior and senior years, after declaring a major. In a later study, the authors claim that similar observations can be made regarding older students. Still, I would read this book with some skepticism.

For a more subtle review, try this one from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/06/06/110...

crisnoble• 12 years ago

The link in the story to the book was broken, but this one works: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo1032722...

nmrm5• 12 years ago

Comparing my experience in higher education to the constant litany of negative literature on education sends up red flags. I typically write off books/articles in this genre as fear mongering.

I've not read this particular book, but a lot like it. The typical pattern is that engineering majors don't see order-of-magnitude in writing and "critical thinking", and humanities students don't see order-to-magnitude improvements in science and math.

But then the author averages everything together and concludes no body's learning much. Go figure.

Getting a lot of value out of college isn't hard. Attend a state school or reputable private college (read: typically for-profits and online programs are a waste of money; mileage may vary). Once there, major in math, a science, or a core humanity (the latter typically doubled with education or another "practical" major). Meet people and have a good time, but make sure you're spending 30-40 hrs/wk on course work.

nmrm5• 12 years ago

Standardized assessments are an inadequate way to measure outcomes at the higher ed level; the methodology discussed in the article is terminally flawed.

I propose that you fundamentally cannot measure what a given person learned or didn't learn in college from a major-agnostic test. Learning at this level is far too specialized.

College is NOT and never should be about getting really good at basic skills. These tests treat college as an iteration on elementary and secondary education.

For example, I majored in math and now I'm in grad school in a related field. I'm sure I would score about the same -- if not worse -- on a standardized mathematics test now as I did in high school. The tests are generally a combination of calculation/arithmetic and Euclidean geometry. Real mathematics has very little to do with calculation, and I was definitely better at churning out Euclidean-style deductions in high school than I am now (I could trivially recover a lot of the useful clever identities I had internalized in high school, but I haven't looked at that material in years).

To conclude that this means I didn't improve tremendously in mathematics during college is just sloppy.

In fact, I would be highly unsurprised to see a negative correlation between actual outcomes (number of top tier grad school admissions, desirability in the market place, professional success 5, 10, 15 years after graduation) and institutions which score very highly on these standardized assessments. Iterating on high school is an absurd waste of the college years.

edit: computation -> calculation.

edtechdev• 12 years ago

I'd read up on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). It addresses the concerns you raised, and it's not aiming to measure some of the things you assert it is measuring. It's not the same thing as the SAT or the GRE. Formative (as opposed to summative) assessments like the CLA are helpful in reforming and improving education. When a high percentage of students are still making the same basic grammatical and writing errors they were as freshmen, that's useful to know. The same thing with mathematical and other skills. It helps convince folks at universities that teaching needs to be reformed, improved to go beyond the standard lecture, homework, and test formula which is ineffective for learning: http://news.sciencemag.org/education/2014/05/lectures-arent-...

See also concept inventories which are tests which are similarly helping measure and assess student conceptual understanding (and misconceptions) in various disciplines (including computer science and mathematics). There are also surveys of student attitudes and engagement and beliefs which are helping improve student learning and retention (like NSSE - the National Survey of Student Engagemen). Then there are non-standard assessments which are helpful for assessing and improving and demonstrating student learning, such as e-portfolios.

Learning can be measured. It can be assessed. (As can motivation, beliefs, etc.) And there are some skills we try to help students learn that are indeed major-agnostic. The ability to write and communicate effectively. The ability to critically think about and evaluate information. The ability to work with others. The ability to properly use and apply mathematical and computational tools. Even digital humanities folks are using computational tools to assist their work. Employers are complaining about some college graduates having poor communication skills, having poor programming skills or conceptual understanding of fundamentals (fizz buzz test), etc. There are things that can and should be improved at the college level - at all levels.

nmrm5• 12 years ago

(this is a living comment until the first reply. Sorry.)

I have four major points:

1. You can assess even major-agnostic, general skills in content-specific ways. Such assessments are far less likely to have the negative externalities of more generic tests (e.g. first or last semester "Literature" courses which are basically CLA et al. boosters. These most definitely exist). But even still, I think this is a bad idea and too ripe for abuse.

2. Generic "Critical Thinking" is often not all it's cracked up to be, and some experts claim it is not statistically correlated with the sort of critical thinking purported to be mastered in science and mathematics courses. (Oh, CLA really likes hedge words. They mean you're smart... I mean... that "you've likely acquired transferable critical thinking skills" [1].)

3. Higher Ed shouldn't be responsible for filling in gaps in High School and even Elementary education. Also, grammar!? I rest my case!

4. The CLA is computer-graded (no, really, it is [1]).

1. A Problem with Generic Critical Thinking

Generic "critical thinking" is often nothing more than "the right kind of sophistry". The author of [1] agrees with this sentiment w.r.t the CLA (although, it should be stated, not in general. See the source; what follows are my own opinions, not those of the author of [1]).

In addition to pointing out that any answer along the lines of "IDK" is treated as sufficient, he also notes that the model answers provided for the CLA are full of logical fallacies.

But the author of [1] really hits the nail on the head in this paragraph:

This is exactly the kind of instruction and practice students receive in a dedicated critical-thinking or informal logic course. Critical-thinking skills are not statistically significantly enhanced by content-specific courses like introduction to philosophy or chemistry, or by content-independent courses such as symbolic logic.

I argue that the what the CLA measures is not what colleges and universities are or should ever be intended to teach. Instead, it measures a tortured form of "critical thinking" that is somehow not statistically significantly improved even by courses in the hard sciences and mathematics. Not even by courses in formal logic! Only by courses in informal logic. If science and math don't improve "critical thinking", I'm not sure what "critical thinking" is supposed to mean. Except, of course, the right kind of sophistry+.

Ergo, it's likely that if performance on the CLA significantly improves, it will be because colleges and universities are teaching to the test in the guise of "Critical Thinking and Informal Logic" (although I'm sure universities will have better names for their mandatory freshman CLA courses).

I'm very concerned that the true humanities -- one place where actual critical thinking is taught -- will be gutted in order to cover the costs of such instruction (I already know of one instance where this has happened).

2. Higher Education Should Assume the Basics

As for grammar and mechanics, things are even simpler. Colleges and universities are absolutely not responsible for those sorts of basic skills.

[1] http://www.assessmentupdate.com/sample-articles/a-fatal-flaw...

+ My use of the word sophistry is definitely intentional. It's worth noting that the sort of persuasion rooted in a combination of informal logic and careful rhetoric ("always use hedge words" is a modern equivalent) is exactly the sort of thing that the Sophists were known for!

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of assessment-driven education. I just don't think it's right for institution-level assessment at the higher education level. Not unless it's content-specific.

mathattack2• 12 years ago

When I see people argue "You can't measure the learning that's going on" I have to disagree. It's only based on my personal experience, but in undergrad I didn't see a lot of learning going on. My (large public Midwestern) school had CS and math majors that studied and learned. But there were a lot of people in other majors doing just enough to graduate. And professors didn't require much. I don't know if it's 10%, 20% or 30% that learned, but it wasn't 50%.

I see this in NYC. The mayor's belief is that we are doing a little too much testing, and closing too many schools. Their reaction to bad schools is "We just might not be measuring the learning." In this case, they seem to be doing an accurate job of measuring the bullying at least.

nmrm5• 12 years ago

Maybe I should have been more specific. Major and content agnostic standardized tests are useless at the college level.

This should be fairly obvious; I think you have to do some work to believe it's possible that it isn't true. How can you measure how well a university prepared a student if you don't even know what the student majored in?

On thing you can measure some fairly rudimentary stuff they should have had coming in (grammar, basic math, etc.). But this is answering the wrong question; universities shouldn't be responsible for catching students up. It's a disservice to people who actually wanted to take the course in which the review happens.

The other thing you can do is measure generic "critical thinking". But I think this sort of test is ripe for abuse. I don't trust college administrators to not abuse it. And besides, generic "critical thinking" isn't. See the link I posted in my other response here.

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011)

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