College degrees: overrated and overpriced?
In an educational culture where you pay big money to study Elvish and Klingon for college credit or take a course called “Knitting for Noobs” or sign up for a class titled “Stupidity,” is it really surprising that most college students don’t learn much during their four years at American institutions of higher learning?
According to a new book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” by sociologists Richard Arum of NYU and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, not much is asked of students and not much is given.
The authors studied some 2,300 undergrads at a spectrum of schools (all of which were promised anonymity) and found that 45 percent showed no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing after two years. In other words, they didn’t learn how to learn.
Half had not taken any courses that required even 20 pages of writing during the previous semester, and one-third didn’t take any courses that required as much as 40 pages of reading a week. After four years, the picture didn’t look much brighter.
And upon graduation, one-third of students had moved back home and 10 percent were unemployed.
And for this result, parents get to shell out between $25,000 and $50,000 a year for tuition at private colleges.
Of course, not all colleges and universities offer courses like “The American Vacation” or “UFO’s in American Society” or “American Degenerates.” But too many do pander to the low-rent taste and ability of many college-bound students.
This is not to say that there aren’t high-achieving, motivated, critical thinkers among our college students, but there surely has been a sea change in the quality of learning, the quality of teaching and the level of expectations set for higher education.
