A new book put forth by two researches claims to find that the majority of college students learn next to nothing throughout their college experience and it has largely taken the media by storm...Take a look.
http://chronicle.com/article/Academically-Adrift-The/130743/
I think "nothing" is a bit of a stretch as even if academics is falling away, some of your most important developmental life takes place in or around the college age, especially if you get away from parents, but I CAN see how many people are not learning. I, however, hesitate to blame it all on the colleges.
First of all, some students aren't cut out for college. I think we need to re-evaluate at a high school level what our guidance counselor's suggest. Not everyone needs to or should go to college. For many, it's a waste of a lot of money on an education they may not grasp or be able to take advantage of. Instead, many people should simply choose vocational school, tech school, or something more on their "level" of reality. We are not all going to be engineers and getting a meaningless degree with bad grades shouldn't be your starting off plan.
Secondly, even excluding the previously referred to, some students don't care and don't try. I don't know the situation of everyone, but there are more than your fair share of students who seem to be in college for "the college experience," not the college education. That has to be taken into account.
Thirdly, some students entering college seem to have gotten a high school education equivalent to most 4th graders. Incomplete sentences, no math skills, no history knowledge, no political understanding, no science background...I'm not saying I was the valedictorian at age 14, but if we expect higher education from colleges, we need to first lay the groundwork of basic academics. You can't learn to be a professional before you're a real student.
Lastly, and this is lastly for my points, not for the overall discussion, parents need to get back in their kids' ears about college.Yes, it's a time for freedom, experimenting, finding out about the world and learning to be on your own...but it's also college, not simply four years of "pre-adultness". It's not a free four years where nothing is to be expected. While it's a time for kids to learn how to live on their own, they also need boundaries so that "living on your own" doesn't mean "do whatever you want despite the consequences." You need to learn to be independent, but you need to learn that in a responsible, real-life way, not some "living-alone-but-totally-reliant-on-parents-for-anything-important" version.
Anyways, seems like an interesting book and troubling, but important conclusion, though I think there's far more to the story than simply saying "colleges aren't teaching students anything anymore."
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