“How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer for many graduates, we have concluded, is not much,” writes Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at NYU and co-author of the new book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.
Among the book’s findings were that 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” in their first two years of college and 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during their entire four years of college (You can read more about these findings at insidehighered.com).
If these findings scare you, you’re not alone.
The New York Times on Tuesday, Jan.18, asked a group of educational professionals and college professors about their takes on these findings.
Some like Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, blamed the problem on the universities themselves. He said that many students in the K-12 educational system come to college without “any affection for voluntarily using one’s mind in the rigorous, sustained and frequently counter-intuitive way that leads to innovation and the advancement of knowledge.”
Rather than challenging students with rigorous work, colleges merely push students through the system to keep their graduation numbers up.
Botstein’s words are rather harsh, and I’m not sure I agree. The onus ought to be on the students to take the initiative to learn. It is not the responsibility of a professor to guarantee learning.
The same study found that 50 percent of the students “don’t take a single course in which they must write more than 20 pages over the course of a semester.”
If students aren’t challenging themselves and merely see the degree as the goal and not the process that leads up to it, then of course they are not going to learn anything. A college education is not just about collecting credits; it’s about opening your mind and acquiring new ways to learn. A college education is more so about learning to learn than about acquiring a nice piece of paper.
What is my ideal solution? Take at least one class completely removed from your major that will genuinely challenge you.
You pay to come to SMU to learn, so you might as well get your money’s worth.
Brandon Bub is a first year English major. Bub can be reached for comments or questions at [email protected].
