Limited Learning In College

[PonyGirl93]

I wouldn't make any serious conclusions from this study. There is far too much to learn during your time at college - not just to be evaluated through tests and book knowledge. To say that education should be strictly online would entirely destroy the social aspect during this growing time in one's life. I think that human interaction is necessary not only for learning, but for life in general. It is not just about the classes you took and your GPA, but the people you met that changed you. Technology can only take us so far.

but I think that doing classes online has allowed me so much more time for interaction with people! My schedule is so much more free to meet and interact with new people. Spring quarter I am going on campus for classes and I am dreading how much of my life I will have to give up to spend a long time in a room with the same people every week! I will be giving up much more interaction with people than I will be gaining. However, I am excited to actually be able to look at my professors for once

[ryoder]

I get that college experience crap a lot.
My college experience was the following:
- impossible to understand foreigners teaching advanced math and science classes
- no parking, spending 30 minutes finding a spot only to walk a half mile to my building
- crowded classrooms, I had 300 in my Chem 1 class, I learned from the book, period
- over half the teachers were grad students working as TAs, they had no practical experience
- long lines for student aid and other services, with a general lack of excitement about working for the university
- a few very good teachers who made classes exciting and cared about your ability to learn
- a lot of very pretty girls

[Potatoloco]

I got several thoughts from this article.....

- 45% is the minority, depending on the percentage of non-responders, it may not even be within the margin of error to reach the majority.

- Roughly 1/3 of students after 4 years don't show improvements, but that'd mean at least 2/3 do show improvement.

- The measurements are based on the first couple of years. Way before students reach a true concentrated part of their learning.

- It doesn't really measure a student's initiative once in school. What percentage actually graduated? It just states what type of study habit is better.

In the end, I think someone's learning complex is going to be entirely dependent on their choice of field they wish to enter. I am an online learner in Finance and Business Admin, which is my perference and how I feel I can learn material at a faster more efficient rate. Much of my family is in pharmacy and engineering. This was done so at either D1 B&M or D2 B&M. This are also two fields that I can say far exceed the "reading your 40 pages per week" and being able to think on a critical/analytical level.

[grauwulf]

::: Warning Rant Mode Activated :::

My general thought is that college has suffered as a victim of it's own marketing success. "You MUST go to college! Not just 'college' but University to be ANYTHING in life."

blah. blah. blah.

The schools are overcrowded & understaffed so the quality of education suffers. This may be a troll-bomb (not my intention) but if our society respected the value of work then, IMPO, that the schools would be much better off.

Technical colleges and universities were established for very different reasons and now it seems that technical/community colleges are just a discount university, but often with much better instruction! To that end I think that society, at least in the USA, needs to understand that Teachers are as important as Lawyers, Doctors need Plumbers, and Carpenters need Programmers. Not everybody _needs_ to go to a four year 'University' to be a valuable contributing member of society. Heck I'd wager a guess that most people don't even USE their degree in their career.

Yes college is very important to success now, but I believe that importance is inflated tremendously.
::: rant deactivated :::

sorry. I'm one of those people that went right to work after high school and have been marveling that the incompetence of the fresh-faced educated work force for years. Now, all an undergrad degree means to me is that you can finish what you start. That's pretty much it.

[toddsbiyj]

Once again I feel the need to throw my 2 cents in the pot.

With regards to what a "degree" actually signifies, well to me anyway, it is all variable;
20 something kid with no experience = It is worthless other than possible building of responsibility, etc. Only an interview will decide this.
30 something with work experience in the same field = motivated and wanting to move up the ladder, they really want this.
30/40/50 something without experience = either they need a change(personally, professionally, lay offs, etc) and need further personal evaluation or they have just been overlooked for the postions they wanted and may have been qualified but not degreed for.
40/50 something with experience = this person definitely has something to share with the organization. Could be a "shit stirrer", OR non-politically correct/ honest/hard working/individual, OR needs to make a move, OR needs better benefits, OR the organization offers beeter options, etc. Either way, they have something to offer the organization.

What actual "real life education/learning" you get from college, once again is too variable. I do agree that mainly a Bachelors degree means that you finished what you started and depending on where you are in life and what your goals are, that could be a great thing for an organization. If you wanted to change paths slightly(my own personal goal) and took courses/exams which taught you things that you may actually utilize in the working world and never previously experienced/understood, then great, that's the reason (IMHO) for school/secondary education. If you are just taking the courses/exams to further your career in a filed you are experienced in(my own personl goal as well) and not actually learning much, then this is the problem. Simply because an employer values a piece of paper over life experience and job specific training doesnt actually mean you gain anything from the educational experience.

Of course every person is a little different and all this type of subject matter is variable. This is just my opinion of what a college education brings to the table when looking at it from an employers point of view. Please don't take this personally as it is just one person's opinion.

[Kaz]

This is long but really isn't a rant.

A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.
...
Thoughts?

Well my first thought was, "Why should it?". Seriously. First off, this was "by the end of their sophomore years". Well, honestly, you don't have to have a ton of complex reasoning under your belt in order to pass random "101" courses, which make up a much greater percentage of the courses a typical B&M student takes during their first two years at university than later on. These are by definition "introductory" courses. Every intro course is basically about getting you familiar with jargon, historical background of the field, giving you a light survey of many of the different sub-specialties in the discipline and showing how the discipline affects "the real world". None of that has anything to do with honing your "logic chopping" skills.

The book is based on information from 24 schools, meant to be a representative sample, that provided Collegiate Learning Assessment data on students who took the standardized test in their first semester in fall 2005 and at the end of their sophomore years in spring 2007.

This brings me to my second point. It would appear that the entirety of the data consists of a standardized test that was administered at the beginning of their freshman year and again at the end of their sophomore year. So the testers are using a "standardized test" and are concerned with "critical thinking and complex reasoning", mostly. Hmm. Well, why should everyone get better at those things regardless of what classes they take? Seriously.

As someone who started off as a philosophy major a million years ago and is now trying to finish a pure mathematics degree, I can honestly say that critical, complex reasoning is not something that is equally distributed amongst the college majors. Nor does it need to be, or mean that a given field is "better" or "worse" than another because of it. You simply don't get into the same level of rigor with regards to that stuff across all avenues of endeavor.

In fact, I really had to curb my tendencies to "over think" things once I got into the work place. I frequently ran into problems because I was "too strict" with how I was interpreting what others were saying, or I spent too much time trying to make something "better" because it wasn't "just right", or any number of situations that arose because my concept of doing a "good job" was founded in having exhaustive air-tight logic, and that just doesn't work very well in a run-of-the-mill workplace! In fact, I came to appreciate how it could actually get in the way of good business decisions.

There is a quote that I know from football: "It's important to know how to 'win ugly'". This is important in business, and in life. You don't often get to "win pretty": having a flawless plan that is executed without a hitch and everything unfolds elegantly. More times than not, you just have to take the lay of the land and just try to get the best result you can at the time. That kind of thing doesn't have much of a place when you are writing up a mathematical proof. The proof is all about "winning pretty".

The Collegiate Learning Assessment has its share of critics who say it doesn't capture learning in specialized majors...

Second-and-a-half point, . This is what I alluded to above. If someone is, say, an art history major at the beginning of their freshman year, how much of an increase in critical thinking skills should they have at the end of their sophomore year? Seriously. Memory and problem solving don't have that much to do with each other. If this example student went from knowing little about the history of art, to having a significant amount of art history memorized, and they were adept at recalling it, I would say that they were a success, so far, in their field. I wouldn't expect this student to have changed at all with respect to their ability to logically deduce things from complex scenarios. I actually don't know why anyone would expect it! Later on, when they are spending time interpreting art and its ramifications, then I would expect it more. But not at this level.

Subsequent research found students one year out of college are not faring well: One-third moved back home, and 10 percent were unemployed. "The findings are troubling news for an engaged citizenry", Arum said. "Almost half of those surveyed said they rarely if ever discuss politics or public affairs with others either in person or online."

hilarious . Does the first part of this even need a formal response? So the only dates mentioned are 2005 and 2007, and those dates still have the students in school. Then they are talking about "one year out of college". So people in 2008 and later who are fresh out of college have 10% unemployment?! and one third move back home? So what! The country has about 10% unemployment banghead ! How much better should the unemployment rate be for the 21 year olds with little to no work experience? Seriously. I'm surprised their unemployment rate is that good!

And what does the comment about almost half of them not discussing politics or public affairs have to do with the rest of the piece? Seriously! That is a non sequitur as far as I'm concerned. You can spend your entire life building world-beating critical thinking skills and never consider politics. There is a treasure trove of luminaries in philosophy and mathematics (and Dr. Greg House) that were not part of the "engaged citizenry" by any means. Some were even anti-social to the point of being shut-ins, but they could logically deduce rings around even the best of us. This part of the article is so bad that it even contradicts itself in only a few paragraphs. Check it out (emphasis mine):

_Social engagement generally does not help student performance. Students who spent more time studying with peers showed diminishing growth and students who spent more time in the Greek system had decreased rates of learning, while activities such as working off campus, participating in campus clubs and volunteering did not impact learning. ...
...
The findings are troubling news for an engaged citizenry, Arum said. Almost half of those surveyed said they rarely if ever discuss politics or public affairs with others either in person or online.

Do you want them engaged or not Arum?! :p Seems to me that the study leans in the direction that people who DON'T get that caught up in public happenings develop better clarity of thought.
<RANT>
And I got news for him: online discussions of politics are some of the lowest quality discussions I have ever witnessed. IMHO, I would actually say that if someone spends too much time arguing on the Interwebs about politics they run the risk of having their critical thinking skills degrade. The emotion of the crowd can overwhelm even the most rational of minds. When you have large amounts of people, maybe even a majority, telling you such-and-such is right that creates a lot of pressure and a false sense of accuracy through consensus. Rationally you may know it is inaccurate, but it's hard to resist the group. I've seen very sound, logical friends get "tainted" because they identified with a large collective and, by definition of being a member, they pushed down their own thoughts when they conflicted with the group's.

And the people that spend the most time doing those things are NOT doing so because of anything to do with critical thinking or complex reasoning. Almost to the man they have their minds made up about such-and-such topic and either want to proselytize or bitch about it. Logic is just the frosting, the cake is made up of feelings. They don't truly "discuss" anything with anybody. They talk at you.
</RANT>


All that of course has nothing to do with how much money someone should spend on college, whether or not a college degree is a necessary prerequisite for a certain job, whether finishing college "means your smart", etc. I'm more or less in line with most of our fellow forumites on those topics: B&M schools have a lot of bad teachers who'd rather be doing research, useless classes no one remembers anyway, huge intro classes that practically require you to teach yourself out of the book anyway, etc.