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College Students Aren’t Learning Much
Education? What Education?
There was a time when going to college meant, by definition, receiving a liberal arts education. You studied history, literature, philosophy, rhetoric, Greek and Latin, and theology. You researched and wrote volumes, and you took exams orally, proving to your teacher that you had inwardly digested your material so thoroughly that you could engage ideas and answer questions on the spot. You didn’t really major in something, though you might “read” in something…reading extra material in the classics, philosophy, law or theology. Once you completed this rigorous course of study, you could be hired right out of undergrad to teach undergrads—that’s how well-prepared you were.
By today’s standards, this seems…impractical. And yet, it used to be that college students could graduate with a liberal arts degree and do anything. Anything. Because 4 years of liberal arts training left them with minds so well-formed they could analyze and resolve problems. And employers used to value this; their idea was, “Give me an employee who can think and learn, and I’ll train him in the specifics of the job.”
But lots of things happened to change this educational culture. In the 1920’s, European universities stopped teaching in Greek and Latin. In the 30’s, the educational establishment removed theology from most curricula. In the 1960’s, critics started to object to the focus on “dead white males” in university curricula, so western philosophy went out the window. And an explosion of technology beginning after World War II and continuing even now made it impossible to cover everything in a 4-year liberal arts degree. You had to major, and in many cases liberal arts were left behind. In about 1970, universities started requiring PhDs for their professors.
Some of these changes were good and necessary, if extreme and often immoderate. But the result was to change the university culture—and even its whole understanding of its very existence—to credentialism. We no longer go to college to have our minds and characters formed, to engage ideas, or to become better citizens. Rather, we go to get the credentials we need to get the jobs we want. You can see this when, for examples, engineering students sit in English 101 and never say, “Reading Shakespeare will make me a better thinker and better person.” No, they say, “When will I ever have to use this?”
Of course, not all culture changes have to be morally bad—some are morally good, and some are just changes, with no moral component attached to them. And with some, you don’t know if they’re bad or good until they’ve been in place for a few decades…and then it’s awfully hard to undo them.
So, what have the results of these changes been? According to a new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, the results have been terrible. College students actually learn very little, and intellectual growth is minimal. Most students don’t ever take courses that require 20 pages of writing over the course of a semester, and many are never assigned 40 pages of reading a week. The more social students are—including Greek houses and study groups—the less they develop intellectually.
Some universities have already taken this study to heart, bumping up writing assignments in every area, even the sciences. But the study has its critics, who say that you can’t measure learning with a standardized test and that the study didn’t account for different learning styles and hands-on training, or even include different majors.
I think the question is, what do you go to college for? What do you want out of your experience? I know very few people who go to college anymore because they want to learn for the sake of learning, or to become better citizens, or to form their intellects and characters. Most people go because the job they want requires a credential—a college degree.
So, what do you think? Is the study correct—students aren’t learning much? Or are they just learning different things for different reasons? Do you think the change is a good thing or a bad thing?
More posts by Kathy Teel »
Author: KathyTeel
Kathy Teel is a freelance writer and editor, and a part time college professor. She lives in Missouri with her husband (another professor), their kids (a high schooler, middle schooler, and grade schooler), and three dogs. Check our her company's website at www.teelwriting.com.
9 Comments
Wow, this is an excellent article with a very interesting point. It makes me sad to know that college was so different back then.
I can understand how most students see this as an opportunity to get a better job- I’m one of them. I’ve said this, “I’ll never use this,” numerous times… It leaves me with an odd feeling reading this.
I must ask, does this apply to attending college physically, or do online classes differ? The reason I ask is because with online classes, you learn most of the lessons by reading lots, and I mean lots of material.
Interaction is limited to family, well in my case it is just my husband. Most of the time if I’m not working, I’m focused on my homework and studies… maybe I’m wrong?
Great article, thanks for posting this!
Nida,
That is a wonderful question. After all, online classes are ONLY reading and writing, maybe some class discussion thrown in there. And I do know that there were no online colleges surveyed in the study.
Perhaps online classes are leading us back to the depth of learning we once enjoyed. I’m not sure “getting a good job” is a bad reason to go to school, but I do kind of think we’ve lost some of our respect for good, clear thinking. I wonder if there’s more of that in online classes.
I wonder how we could find out…
As an online instructor and a member of the academic leadership for a major online university, I think that online learning is turning this tide. Our courses are under a great deal of scrutiny because people are somewhat suspect of online learning, and for that reason we go above and beyond to make sure courses are meaningful and full of opportunities for reading, writing, and development of critical thinking skills that make one a “scholar.” Additionally, we engage in making sure our classes meet “Quality Matters” standards. Quality Matters is an organization dedicated to creating a national benchmark for online course design. http://www.qmprogram.org.
Great article, Kathy!
E, I was hoping you’d weigh in on this conversation! The study also didn’t consider non-traditional students– and many of my students are non-traditional. I wonder how that would affect the whole premise.
Excellent article. I do think that students learn different things for different reasons, and in a fast-paced society where you pretty much need a degree to sell hot dogs on the sidewalk, there are certainly a lot of students who find the unrelated-yet-required courses a waste of time, a barrier between them and the key to finally becoming a competitive player in the economy. Other students in the same kind of situation, however, are going to approach it with a different mindset, one that allows them to learn everything they can while they’re there, relishing the diversity of knowledge to be obtained, discussing and debating experiences with classmates, hoping to excel in all of it so they can leave college with so much more than just a degree.
College is supposed to be hard, and students should expect it to be. Part of what makes it hard is being made to work outside of your comfort zone. I hated my philosophy class and i really don’t care if the table is *really* there or not, but I’m glad I took it because it taught me a new way to think. I want to be pushed and tested and challenged, because that’s how you get smarter. I want to graduate from college knowing that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but that I earned every fiber of the paper my degree is printed on. Otherwise, for me at least, it’ll just be a big fat waste of money.
Interesting perspective, and I agree, for the most part. Many students go to college to gain a degree — any degree — which will hopefully merely give them an eventual “foot in the door” to a job. As often as not, excluding studies focusing on specific areas such as law, medicine, and engineering, many studies do not, in the long run, have much to do with the actual career into which a student might eventually settle.
On the other hand, electives do provide an avenue for students to learn something about a subject in which they may be interested, but which might be out of their specific area of study. These, in my memory, were usually the “fun classes.”
Yeah, that’s true–there usually is room for electives. And I’m not naive–I even joke with my speech students that I’m aware that none of them is there out of a burning desire to speak in public. People do, and have to, go to college to get a credential for a job. I just wish there was still room for the kind of education that forms an intellect and a character, and equips a student to deal with anything–because they know how to think well.
I guess such a shift is necessary, but I find it sad. We go to school for training to be fitted for work, we don’t go to learn and broaden our minds. Yes, we gain savvy workers, but we lose out on that spark of humanity that makes us better people by not learning how to think and feel more deeply.
Yes, and I think that’s where the biggest loss is. In the past, a liberal arts education created thinking minds, which then produced great ideas… but where are our great ideas now? Or even our good ideas? We’re hard pressed to come up with them, or to know them when we see them, because our minds haven’t been disciplined to recognize them. I understand the need for training and being qualified for jobs, but isn’t there some way we can have both?