The most significant book on higher education written in recent years is out, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. While I have not read every word of this new University of Chicago Press book, I have read enough of it and an accompanying summary to know that it is very, very important, and extremely devastating in what it says about American higher education today. Basically, students study little and, as a consequence, learn little.
Arum and Roksa wed data from two very important but underutilized test instruments, the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). These instruments are used at hundreds of schools, and the Arum and Roksa book is based on detailed results from a good sized sample of students from 29 institutions. The CLA measures things such as aptitude with respect to critical learning and writing skills, while the NSSE mostly measures how students are engaged at school, in large part measured by how they use their time.
For the reader not familiar with some of the findings, Arum and Roksa conclude:
- “gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills (i.e., general collegiate skills) are either exceedingly small or empirically non-existent for a large proportion of students”;
- 36 percent of students experienced no significant improvement in learning (as measured by the CLA) over four years of schooling;
- less than one-half of seniors had completed over 20 pages of writing for a course in the prior semester;
- total time spent in academic pursuits is 16 percent; students are academically engaged, typically, well under 30 hours per week;
- scholarship from earlier decades suggest there has been a sharp decline in both academic work effort and learning;
- “students…majoring in traditional liberal-arts fields…demonstrated significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study. Students majoring in business, education, social work , and communications had the lowest measurable gains”;
- 35 percent of the students sampled spent five hours or less a week studying alone; the average for all students was under 9 hours.
Critics will no doubt argue that the CLA is an imperfect test instrument or that the sample of schools was too small and unrepresentative. What strikes me most, however, is that these findings are similar to those found in other studies (e.g. the Time Use Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics), and with my own personal observations based on a half century of involvement in higher education in all types of institutions ranging from mid-quality state universities to elite private liberal-arts colleges and prestigious private research institutions.
Moreover, the survey seems to confirm that many of the modern-day trends in higher education have lowered the quality of the educational experience. “Collaborative learning” is all the rage, and students are encouraged to work in groups—the Arum and Roksa study, however, suggests that studying alone is more effective than studying in groups. Another trend is the decline in the “market share” of the traditional liberal arts disciplines—social and natural sciences and the humanities—yet students in these disciplines seem to be learning more. To be sure, the communications and business majors are sometimes picking up vocational skills that are useful, which are not measured by the CLA.
To me, this above all further strengthens the thinking of scholars ranging from Robert Hutchins and James Bryant Conant (to go back more than a half a century) to Charles Murray today. As the proportion of the population going to college rises, more and more of them are simply not suited for academically rigorous forms of higher learning. Consequently, schools dumb down the curriculum, engage in grade inflation, etc.
Why, then, do college graduates continue to earn a healthy premium over high school graduates? In part, because, despite being relatively lazy and relatively unchallenged in school, college graduates are still smarter, more ambitious and more disciplined than the graduates of our relatively mediocre (on average) secondary schools. College is an expensive (to students) screening device, and one that is increasingly emphasizing the socialization dimensions of young adulthood over the dissemination of true knowledge and ideas. We are sending too many kids to school to learn too little to get jobs for which often the little that they do learn is not even necessary.
Ultimately, the public policy question is why the financially strapped federal government provides billions of dollars to subsidize students participating in the increasingly expensive and hedonistic experience we call “higher education?” Why do states subsidize the institutions that are responsible for this decline, rather than directly supporting a modest number of serious, hard-working and financially needy students? Why is higher education so dysfunctional, and becoming more so daily? When is the bubble going to burst? Run; do not walk, to the store to get this book.
32 Responses to Academically Adrift: A Must-Read
mikeinthemiddle - January 20, 2011 at 5:00 pm
This might be the first positive book review I have ever seen where its author says they did not finish the book. Well, at least he read the summary.
dboyles - January 20, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Many of us in the professoriate (myself for 30 years now) realized this problem long ago and decided to address it. Students in content-oriented classes in particular (and that means STEM education) have increasingly put the responsibility on the talking head in front of the classroom to “tell them everything they are supposed to know.” Clearly, this shift of responsibility was to save the student the sheer time of work outside of class (homework = the work that a student is to do at home”)and cater to illusions of just how effortless a “good” teacher could make learning, rather than its opposite, namely, that good teachers are those who know how to put students to work. Many faculty were and are more than willing to comply with student demands for a variety of reasons, not the least being student opinion surveys that have shifted responsibility onto the faculty members with no mention on the surveys of the responsibility required or time spent by the student outside of class. This conspicuous absence of mention of the time spent outside of class studying or of the sweat equity required by the student in mastering the course content was a sign to many of us, as were comments “I follow your lectures just fine but do poorly on your exams.” Coupled with fads such as “just in time learning” where on-the-spot teaching supposedly could address everything a student could or was to know, traditional guidelines such as “two hours out of class for every hour in class” gradually disappeared from university catalogs and regents policy manuals with nothing to replace them other than pleasing the customer as the sine qua non of good teaching. Some of us smartened up and learned to structure our courses in such a way that the student had no choice under class policy but to study out of class. I myself found that the only way to force/create this necessary precondition to foster student learning was to cease lecturing altogether, however much I missed it and the good students (5% of the class) may suffer from it. My method has been previously described: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/learning-centered-pedagogy/25052. I do not consider it to be collaborative learning, and prefer to call it text-centered learning. It contains elements of individual responsibility first, coupled with collective forgiveness yet intellectual processing second–and it does require more work of myself as well as that of my students than would lecturing alone. There are, after all, collaborative learning techniques that require student accountability, and then the mishmash type which do not.
It is not merely because the population is rising and more more students are going to college that has created this state-subsidized largesse. It is rather administrations, faculty, and their students together which have tacitly agreed to it, a pact made and strengthened gradually over time with accomplices who fell down on their responsibilities, a pact which has secured the demise of requisite functions and expectations which alone must assure solid educations. In short it is an ethical problem created by players all of whom have short-circuited traditional ethical principles in the name of ‘innovation’ and catering to the lowest and laziest aspects of the human condition. We once held to the principle “you get out of it what you put into it.” In a credit economy the rule “buy now, and pay (with all the negative meanings of that word) later” is finally coming to roost in ways that if they were anticipated, were all the more denied. Having sown to the wind we now reap the whirlwind. Yes, we now have a “structural deficit” nationwide in education and not merely in the economic sense.
I look forward to reading this book.
mschedlb - January 20, 2011 at 5:19 pm
I find that I often have to show my students how to study — they learn little of that in high school. So, I help them form study groups. I make them do short write-ups. I have them present new material in class. I ask them to give presentations of short research assignments.
We are basically tasked to become “learning facilitators” and slowly teach them how to learn. Of course, my students generally complain that I expect a lot, go at “breakneck speed”, and force them to know stuff that I didn’t teach them in class. But at the end they always comment how much they’ve learned and how they have come to love the subject.
And I often get notes from students once they graduate or go on an internship that so much of what they learned in my class is actually getting used in the company at which they work.
gameswithwords - January 20, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Can we be sure the historical trends don’t reflect changes in the aggregate student body? The are more less-selective schools (I’m talking about you, University of Phoenix) taking in larger student bodies than (to my knowledge) there once were. The more selective (and typically older) schools offer primarily “liberal arts” majors and typically do not offer business or the other majors you mentioned, so the finding that liberal arts majors learn more also seems confounded.
But perhaps this is addressed in the analyses described in this book.
idajones - January 20, 2011 at 8:11 pm
I have not read the book. I have read a couple of summaries of it and hope to have the opportunity to read it.
The comments of gameswithwords, mschedlb and dboyles mirror my own experiences-that students arrive underprepared. They have no idea what the study expectations are for college courses. That inadequate preparation doesn’t become apparent during their first few semesters. Students in one class, according to one of our professors, studied an average of one hour per week for General Ed courses (and many of these were Honors’ college students). So, students’ study expectations are unclear. I speak about this in my blog (http://idajones.wordpress.com/)
In addition, students do expect faculty to lecture to them. Many students do not open their textbooks-they expect the faculty to tell them what they need to know. And what they need to know is what is needed to pass the test. That’s also inadequate preparation.
The summary mentioned business students’ failure to “learn” much during four years. I want to read the book to find out the authors’ hypothesis for that. Is it that GE courses (which all majors at our institution take) do not prepare students sufficiently? There are many other possible reasons, but I’ll not speculate more until I read the book.
22228715 - January 21, 2011 at 7:25 am
Well, for starters, one of the major tools referenced is the Collegiate Learning Assessment, not the Critical Learning Assessment (CLA). Since the entire study revolves around this, it is a little concerning that the reviewer has that wrong (yes?). To judge the worth of the book and the study, I need to read more about the CLA.
The NSSE is the other instrument, and also worth a look before you come to conclusions. NSSE is entirely self-report by the student, and asks a few hundred questions to which they have to guestimate an answer in a couple of seconds. A students’ choices run along a spectrum from never/few/zero to very often/very much/11-20/more than 20. Quick! Calculate the number of problem sets you did each week over 27 weeks and then average! I’d be curious to see in the book or elsewhere whether there have been any good attempts to investigate whether student self-perceptions calculated quickly on a long, long inventory correlate well with actual work product.
Of course, then there are the bigger questions. Do problem sets, 20-pg papers, lecture-listening, etc. (without considering content, topic, or supplemental activity) actually yield more learning? If so, which learning? Is quantity the goal? If employers are OK with what they learn, is that OK, or is good content the decision of faculty? which faculty? or does the state decide? If we state that learning is declining, how do we know that? Neither the NSSE nor the CLA is old enough to provide very much of an historical perspective, given the history of American higher education let alone higher education as a whole
Thanks for the tip to take a look, and think about some questions.
grward - January 21, 2011 at 8:57 am
I’ve been following this discussion since the original report came out in the Chronicle earlier this week. While I realize that we must be critically skeptical about the original study’s methodology and interpretation until we’ve had time to read and evaluate it (and I’ve put my name on the waiting list for the book when it arrives at my university bookstore in the next few weeks, so I haven’t seen it yet), I find myself wondering who could possibly be teaching undergraduates currently and think that the conclusions of the study must be due to some artifact or bias? My only concern is that the reported 66% of students improving over 4 years may be an overestimate, given that the ones who completed more than 2 but less than 4 years of study likely would have lowered that number even more.
In my department, those of us who’ve been around for a long enough time like to say that, when we accepted 30-35 applicants a year, we also used to graduate 25 good strong students each year. Now that we accept 120 applicants per year, we graduate …wait for it … 25 good strong students a year. The other 85 or so graduates are the kind I would never hire for any kind of job no matter how menial. I myself just submitted the grades for my senior research methods course from last term and, to put it bluntly, I’ve been trying to wash the stink off my hands ever since. What was I going to do? My contract expires this summer and the department keeps going on about the cutbacks and the lack of “soft money” available for next year (only in a research-intensive university would the phrase “soft money” refer to money required to maintain a core function of the institution). I understood my role in all this, and so I threw the extra marks at them so that they can cross the podium in the Spring.
eberg - January 21, 2011 at 10:24 am
Vedder, once again channeling Murray, opines that “As the proportion of the population going to college rises, more and more of them are simply not suited for academically rigorous forms of higher learning” and that “We are sending too many kids to school to learn too little to get jobs for which often the little that they do learn is not even necessary.”
Actually, as Vedder and other readers must know, the authors’ main takeaway, even in their widely circulated summaries, is NOT that too many students are attending. Rather, it is that colleges and professors are expecting and demanding too little of them. This core finding cuts across class and racial lines: even the marginal student improves with active and demanding programs of instruction, while much “better-suited” students stagnate in their absence.
How much easier (and cheaper in the short run) it would be for everyone if we just reduced the number of college-attending students, particularly those “…not suited for academically rigorous forms of higher learning”.
11120971 - January 21, 2011 at 11:12 am
what kind of editor allows one of their writers to publish a review of a book he says he hasn’t read?
proflee - January 21, 2011 at 12:01 pm
dboyles,
Thanks for writing those long comments. I am now setting up my syllabus for next semester and am going to try your method. Between reading this review by Richard Vedder and your way of teaching, I’ve learned a lot. Thanks to both of you. There is a way of tackling the problems that Arum and Roksa raise — unfortunately, they are time consuming. Like many of you, my university keeps raising the bar around number of students in classes and publishing requirements — not to mention my own standards, which are even higher. Still, I can’t stand the idea that my students aren’t learning and developing in my classes. What could be more important!
gameswithwords - January 21, 2011 at 12:17 pm
@eberg: I think it’s an empirical question whether, if standards were raised, students would rise to the challenge. My gut feeling suggests not. I know plenty of students who work very little and believe they are working absurdly hard.
If a school raises its standards and the students do not meet the challenge, what is the school to do? Fail 80% of its students? How long would it take before the local attorney general sued? My point is that there are extremely strong incentives for schools not to raise their standards.
Comments about whether less prepared students are attending college now cut two ways. I think you are right that that is not necessarily a reason to refuse to educate them. But it *does* mean that if you look at historical trends, you will see colleges performing “worse” now than previously. That should be taken into consideration.
becauseisaidso - January 21, 2011 at 12:21 pm
For many institutions and funding groups, the point of going to college is EXPLICITLY NOT LEARNING. It is either “social justice” or hope for an improved local economy.
It is driven at the national level by the statistics that the US has a smaller proportion of the total number of college graduates than it previously did.
Speaking for my own university, no one in the administration cares what students know or learn. They refuse to talk about it. They care only about retention, throughput and speed to degree, explicitly, openly, strongly. Attempts to teach, foster learning, hold to standards, etc. are actually OBSTACLES to these other goals and folks who even talk about learning/outcomes/etc. are considered irritants. If there is any requirement that any students fail, there is pressure to get rid of it. The state funding body has made a direct, linear connection between future university budgets and getting the largest number of “graduates” as quickly as possible, of course with this result. There is negative incentive to require reading, writing, analysis or math/science.
Faculty are discouraged from teaching in any way that “puts obstacles” in the way of students getting through as fast as possible with as few failures and complaints as possible. With both administration and students demanding that courses have no demands, no work and no outcomes and punishing those who don’t comply, what outcome can we expect?
I can vouch for the continued high standards and demands of elite colleges, per my currently college-attending extended family members. I think this phenomenon is largely the result of schools like mine that don’t have/can’t get/don’t want an academic reputation and need to justify themselves in social and economic terms instead.
cnewfield - January 21, 2011 at 3:48 pm
The real answer to the question of limited gains from college is simple: limited and declining investment.
If you disaggregate these folks’ data you will find a skew in weak performance towards public colleges and universities that have had their primary source of instructional funding — state tax dollars — cut repeatedly using every economic weakness or ideological gust against government as an excuse to cut investment in younger people, an increasing proportion of whom are the students of color people like Murray doubt are suited for college. When 70% of your faculty are adjucts with 4 other courses to teach at 3 schools, or you have 400 students in a lecture with no discussion sections, how can you assign 50 pages of writing in a semester?
The solution is exactly the opposite of the one you seem to favor. We need to reinvest in quality higher education, with intensive, student-centered learning at the core of it, and not continue to pull money out as we have been doing for 30 years.
Moreover, the survey seems to confirm that many of the modern-day trends in higher education have lowered the quality of the educational experience.
menubia - January 21, 2011 at 6:18 pm
I think that the issues brought up in this book would be addressed, and maybe reversed, if professors got teaching credentials (or some equivalent experience where one learns classroom management, learning theory, human development, curriculum development, etc.) and students were not coming out of a “teach to the test” high school environment. Oh, let’s not forget better funding for P-20 education. That would really help things as well.
davidfalcone - January 24, 2011 at 5:21 pm
… many of the generalizations rising out of the particulars of this study make it easy to lose sight of the concrete reality involving so many of us who simply get up in the morning, go to work to teach, and work with our students … all the nuances and textures that makes each of them different and each of them measurable on their own terms. To suggest that so many are learning nothing is simply what happens when you forget how much you ignore when you focus on what you have measured.