Posted: 1/18/2011 11:20:26 AM EDT
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(CBS/AP) Kids are often told that to make it life, they must go to college. They work hard to get there. Parents and kids drain savings or take out huge loans to pay for it all. And what do kids end up learning? The answer: not much. 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. Study: College Students Not Learning Much |
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Historically, I don't imagine that these statistics would be any different for undergraduate courses. Even if you learn the information, you won't hold on to it.
I was always told that whatever I learned in college, FORGET IT. You either won't use it in "the real world", or you will be told to do it differently. Education (that is useful in "the real world") probably stops around the sophomore or junior year, in high school. Doctors and engineers, you get a pass. |
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Not surprising really. For example, read any news article with regards to grammar and it is clear that journalism schools have failed miserably.
I was an engineering and business major and I suck at spelling and grammar but could easily out edit most people currently employed as journalists or editors. 
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I didn't start to feel enlightened until I was about to graduate college. Then, everything "clicked" for me.
It was weird...almost like my moment of Zen. Everything I was learning in different disciplines sort of had the same underlying truth to it. I started to see similarities and connections between this, that, and the other. |
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Probably because teaching these days means following some set curriculum, following a book, with extensive amounts of paperwork - and no real hands on education and training for the individual. But that's just my take on it... Not all... This news piece was displayed on the projector in my chemistry class today. My professor surmised it is related to the fact that colleges receive more state funds the more students they have. By making school easy they retain more students. |
| I would agree with this sentiment. Nothing against University, but the amount of liability protection with advisement, babysitting, and constant monitoring of undergraduates I see compared to my days a decade ago is outrageous. It seems that we have forgotten personal responsibility and given way to coddling our younger Adults (yes they are adults). Along with useless social science and politically correct and revenue producing education products we have left our core national goals at the door with only the students left holding nothing but student loan debt and marginal understanding of higher education. Without any show of core competencies for employers to desire and little skillsets these people have I fear we are doomed as our education system lags behind even communist China. |
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A college degree is mainly a sign that you can actually stick something out for 4-5 years.
But college was also a hell of a lot of fun and I wouldn't have given it up for anything. I can understand why some athletes choose another year of college girls and parties over an early payday from the NFL. |
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Quoted: <= pissed parent currently paying for college.As a 25yo, I can tell you that about 70-90% of the college "industry" is a scam. Making student loans non-defaultable was an epically stupid idea. All college has become now is a farm for future debt slaves. Bingo. The first two years of college are about wringing money from parents and students "because they have to". And then the student spends maybe two years learning maybe some useful stuff that employers might actually want to hire for. Which is why when you pit an average US Bachelors against a more focused and less "broad based" European or asian Bachelors, the US employee gets their asses kicked and have to go to a "Masters" to play catchup. Unless the job involves making small talk on fine art and one armed black lesbian theater studies while working as a "Barista" at Starbucks. |
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Directly related to made up programs like Zombie 101 and Introduction to Startrek Sociology Zombie 101 would have kicked ass. The multiple choice portion of the final exam could include properly choosing the correct name of the firearm or weapon pictured. There could be debates over what is the best caliber for disposing of zombies. I unfortunately had to take Communism 101, I mean Sociology 101. |
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A BA or BS should consist of two years of general education courses, a year of career related studies and a year of credited work experience. Fuck the general education unless it is algebra, comprehensive reading, business ethics, and biology. All those happy go lucky lifetime fitness, personal touchy feel good classes are a gigantic waste of time. If you want to take Art history or sociology then take it if it corresponds to your given major, but for what waste of time and money do I need these classes for a career in finance or accounting. |
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Ditto on that. The problem is that the teachers don't bring in "teaching aids" or other stuff outside of the text book, ie nothing solid or concrete.
Probably because teaching these days means following some set curriculum, following a book, with extensive amounts of paperwork - and no real hands on education and training for the individual. But that's just my take on it... Where I used to work we had a guy who was 100% Navajo Indian. He collect those type of art and silver pieces. He took all of pieces to my daughter's 4rd grade classroom to "share" with the kids, I was there on campus with my friends, and when lectured, the kids listened very intently. At the end, the kids had some very interesting questions, that I would've never thought about myself. As for myself, my youngest son was study WWII. We were doing the Pacific Theater near the Australia. My son was very bored with me telling this, that, and the other, but an old WWII vet overhead me talking about the subject, and he chimed in, imediately my son' interest perked up on the subject. So the problem is that reading most of this stuff from a book is pretty boring, and the kids do it because they have to, and not because they want to. |
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Once again, another clip from HBO's "Treme" is applicable in another arfcom thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdqCkJswN6U&feature=related BTW, the above actually happened at Tulane University back around 2005 or 2006. |
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A BA or BS should consist of two years of general education courses, a year of career related studies and a year of credited work experience. Fuck the general education unless it is algebra, comprehensive reading, business ethics, and biology. All those happy go lucky lifetime fitness, personal touchy feel good classes are a gigantic waste of time. If you want to take Art history or sociology then take it if it corresponds to your given major, but for what waste of time and money do I need these classes for a career in finance or accounting. That's what I meant by general education. Shit every adult American entering the professional workforce should know. |
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I teach Freshman and Sophomore level Comp Sci. Very basic stuff, required of all students. MS Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint.
30-40% of my students are in remedial course as a result of poor test scores in English, Writing and Math. In some cases, they will be in remedial courses for all three subjects. It's more the 'norm' than the exception these days that a student is in multiple remedial courses. In some of my Fall courses, the completion rates, meaning "C or Better" was under 50% of the students. My textbook's reading level is 9.5-10.5 (grade level). The assignments are easier, in most cases, than what I gave to my 7th-8th grade classes in the 90s. I have taught the same course, for ten years, with little variation in curriculum (Office 98, 03, 07, etc.) Readability of the text is unchanged. The frequency, grade level and type of assignment is also equivalent. However, the student performance level has fallen off a cliff. We have seen enrollments more than double over the last ten years. We are up more than 10 percent this semester compared to a year ago, with the five previous years all being double digit growth. More students, less performance. It is a human wave of students coming to school these days. They are woefully unprepared. However, they are cheerful little citizens. "You can do it, Johnny!" and he actually believes that he can succeed. In the face of ten failing grades, he thinks he can still succeed. Maybe he studies really hard next week? Maybe he can do really well on the final? Maybe he can get some extra credit? Who knows? But, Johnny is less prepared than a ninth grader of the previous decades. He smiles, he skips class, he tweets, he updates his status on Facebook. All while his parents believe that Johnny is going to do something with his college degree. TRG |
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Quoted: In college I learned vast amounts more about physics (including structural analysis and strength of materials), chemistry and mathematics than I did in high school. Yeah, my writing probably didn't improve much. So the fuck what? I learned how to write papers in high school. Going to college to learn how to write is full of fail. |
| A few years ago, I enrolled at a local tech school here and I took a series of computer science related courses (apparently, my courses were very similar to what TRG currently teaches). None of the course work was all that difficult and I got straight A's in everything I took. Yet, despite that, some people still struggled. I never had any real issue with my course work so I attributed other peoples struggles to laziness and incompetence. I doubt my assumptions are wrong here. |
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As TRG pointed out above, the problem is NOT really with colleges/universities being any different, or with kids today being any dumber or lazier or anything like that.
The difference is that it USED to be that only relatively smart kids went to college. Nowadays, TONS of kids that quite honestly probably shouldn't be going to college, end up going (for a variety of reasons) - and those kids are just not well suited to the learning model of college, and consequently don't do very well or learn very much. |
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I'm actually learning quite a bit about my industries. As a future Industrial Hygienist, its my job to know stuff about every industry. The stuff I've learned isn't stuff I would have known or been able to figure out in high school or even my first year of college. But then again, I'm 25 and have been out there...so I understand the importance of a valuable degree. 75% of college students are idiots. |
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Quoted: Quoted: In college I learned vast amounts more about physics (including structural analysis and strength of materials), chemistry and mathematics than I did in high school. Yeah, my writing probably didn't improve much. So the fuck what? I learned how to write papers in high school. Going to college to learn how to write is full of fail. Hence my post. I wright slightly better than I did when I was a highschool senior. Big whoop. |
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As TRG pointed out above, the problem is NOT really with colleges/universities being any different, or with kids today being any dumber or lazier or anything like that. The difference is that it USED to be that only relatively smart kids went to college. Nowadays, TONS of kids that quite honestly probably shouldn't be going to college, end up going (for a variety of reasons) - and those kids are just not well suited to the learning model of college, and consequently don't do very well or learn very much. As long as they fail I don't see the problem. People get fired at work, people wash out of the military, people fail at college. If any of those failures get to stay, then you have a problem. |
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Nothing new in the report... In my lib arts classes I learned to regurgitate the crap right back to them. History is history and English is English, nothing changed in either of those. In programming, accounting, etc I learned quite a bit.  I don't believe they are talking about the acquisition of knowledge - they are talking about learning critical thinking skills. You don't need to go to college to acquire knowledge. You can get that from books just as effectively. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: In college I learned vast amounts more about physics (including structural analysis and strength of materials), chemistry and mathematics than I did in high school. Yeah, my writing probably didn't improve much. So the fuck what? I learned how to write papers in high school. Going to college to learn how to write is full of fail. Hence my post. I wright slightly better than I did when I was a highschool senior. Big whoop. I know, I am agreeing with you. I have had to take 9 hours of writing courses for my accounting degree. All of those courses were easier than my high school writing classes. Its just more evidence that college is turning into extended high school. |
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Directly related to made up programs like Zombie 101 and Introduction to Startrek Sociology The Physics of Superheroes is an interesting course for Intro to Physics students... If it keeps their attention for 45 minutes and they learn the concepts and math... |
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As TRG pointed out above, the problem is NOT really with colleges/universities being any different, or with kids today being any dumber or lazier or anything like that. The difference is that it USED to be that only relatively smart kids went to college. Nowadays, TONS of kids that quite honestly probably shouldn't be going to college, end up going (for a variety of reasons) - and those kids are just not well suited to the learning model of college, and consequently don't do very well or learn very much. As long as they fail I don't see the problem. People get fired at work, people wash out of the military, people fail at college. If any of those failures get to stay, then you have a problem. I agree. It's not a major problem, just a stupid waste of peoples' time. I was just trying to explain the findings of the study, and pointing out that it doesn't mean that college sucks. |
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A BA or BS should consist of two years of general education courses, a year of career related studies and a year of credited work experience. The general education for two years is overkill. A year at the most should be required. 1.5 years of career studies. 1.5 years of mandatory work experience. There are so many worthless classes that I took in college to fulfill requirements. Geology, some stupid pre-calc class where everything was repeated from my junior year in high school, statistics class that has no bearing on my career, some technology class where all the guy did was talk about how great Mac computers are, ethnic studies (I don't even want to start). There are probably more but I can't think of them at the moment. That amounts to about $6000 in wasted tuition, without fees and books , that I wasted. The only redeeming factor is that my program included a mandatory paid internship for a total of three semesters, or about one year. Without that, my education would have been virtually worthless. ETA: I forgot one, I took a class that the only purpose was to teach me how to use Microsoft Excel and Access; that was a waste of fucking time that I could have figured out on my own if I really needed to. |
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I'm actually learning quite a bit about my industries. As a future Industrial Hygienist, its my job to know stuff about every industry. The stuff I've learned isn't stuff I would have known or been able to figure out in high school or even my first year of college. But then again, I'm 25 and have been out there...so I understand the importance of a valuable degree. 75% of college students are idiots. Some may be idiots. However, I think most are simply lazy and uninterested in college work. They love the freedom of college, the frat parties and hooking up with the opposite sex. The actual work, on the other hand, bores them because they think they'll be 20 years old forever so learning anything of any significance can wait till some other time. Most aren't stupid. Naive? Yes...very. Lazy? Certainly. Do most have misplaced priorities? Yes––-without a doubt. |
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(CBS/AP) Kids are often told that to make it life, they must go to college. They work hard to get there. Parents and kids drain savings or take out huge loans to pay for it all. And what do kids end up learning? The answer: not much.
[div]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. [/quote] Duh what are you going to learn in Bio 101 psyche 101, Soc 101, and College algebra? Those classes are meant to remove the idiots and force undecideds into a major all those skills are taught in 300 & 400 level courses. |
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As TRG pointed out above, the problem is NOT really with colleges/universities being any different, or with kids today being any dumber or lazier or anything like that. The difference is that it USED to be that only relatively smart kids went to college. Nowadays, TONS of kids that quite honestly probably shouldn't be going to college, end up going (for a variety of reasons) - and those kids are just not well suited to the learning model of college, and consequently don't do very well or learn very much. Like I said, it has all correlated with not allowing student loans to go through bankruptcy. More money is lent out because the risk of default has dropped to zero, they are slaves to that debt until they die. More kids enroll, many of whom would probably see no ROI on a college education, useless degrees and fields of study pop up to accommodate them and their lower intelligence. Bureaucratic bloat takes place at the college/university because of the ever-increasing money stream, more opulent boarding is created, along with other expenses that have nothing to do with learning, thus leading to inflation in higher learning rising at four times the rate of the broader economy. Now it takes a sum of money equal to an entry-level house to go to college. It makes no sense when the price of information over the last 15 years has dropped so precipitously. We could fix this college problem by ending the special status of student debt. Lending would drop with the increased risk, and would be predicated on future income. Lending for degrees for useless fields of study would dry up. No more "women's studies" majors unless they paid on their own dime. Colleges would be foced to lower costs to more realistic levels. etc. |
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As TRG pointed out above, the problem is NOT really with colleges/universities being any different, or with kids today being any dumber or lazier or anything like that. The difference is that it USED to be that only relatively smart kids went to college. Nowadays, TONS of kids that quite honestly probably shouldn't be going to college, end up going (for a variety of reasons) - and those kids are just not well suited to the learning model of college, and consequently don't do very well or learn very much. As long as they fail I don't see the problem. People get fired at work, people wash out of the military, people fail at college. If any of those failures get to stay, then you have a problem. I agree. It's not a major problem, just a stupid waste of peoples' time. I was just trying to explain the findings of the study, and pointing out that it doesn't mean that college sucks. FWIW, when I was going to college, my middle class parents (both school teachers) made 'too much money' for me to be eligible for a grant. My folks' paid for the classes, and the word 'student loan' was never discussed. I graduated with no college debts. I suspect 50% or more of the current students are on either a grant or loan. Most, on grants. They receive full tuition reimbursement, textbook stipends, fuel stipend, food stipend, and housing stipend. All of this is free money. Many simply sign up, collect the checks and never attend classes. They do this for at least two semesters until they are suspended academically. Nobody investigates, the colleges keep their mouths shut, and the cycle continues, but, it is an abuse of the system that is widespread, indecent and egregious. Colleges get paid for contact hours. Meaning, the more students per class, the more tax dollars we receive. Without these state and federal subsidies we lock the doors, turn out the lights and find new jobs. Grants and loans mean higher student head counts. Which means more contact hours, which means more subsidy funding... and away we go. TRG |
