Richard Arum

The most dangerous book of the year. Arum and Roksa present a controversial thesis: that college is not teaching students critical reasoning and writing skills, and back it up in-depth research based on a survey of 2200+ students across 24 institutions, and results on the CLA standardized test.

As a recent college graduate and current PhD student, "Academically Adrift" matches my experiences to a T. While some students are capable of benefiting from college, many students (45% by the authors show more numbers) show no learning, managing their career to minimize time in difficult classes while maximizing socializing as they achieve an increasingly expensive and meaningless certificate.

This crisis has many parents: poor high schools, an academic culture that does not value teaching, students-as-consumers, and so on. I don't know what the fix is, but this book is starting a much needed conversation.

And as a final note, in sociology you can always critique somebody methodology. Much of the study is based on changes in the CLA across two years. In my experience, the first two years of college are about searching many fields for the one that appeals to you. Its a slew of introductory classes. The meaty classes that teach critical reasoning don't show up until the 300 and 400 level. So, the authors might be over-stating their claims in this regard. On the other hand, the number of people with "some college" is a significant category, and we may have to recognize that these people are much less educated than thy appear to be. show less

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses is a detailed collection of statistics and cross references to additional research compiled by the authors. While the book contains 259 pages, the relevant information it presents is limited to the first 144 pages. The remainder is devoted to the bibliography and validation of the authors’ statistical analysis.

The book can be summarized by three basic themes:
Education is not equally available or of the same quality across show more socioeconomic lines.
Students don’t want to study and want the easiest path to a degree.
Educators promote this behavior because they don’t hold students to standards.

The book offers that students today have high aspirations but simply no plans for reaching those goals. They are “adrift” not only academically but in their lives. They have no drive and expect a degree to be handed to them. Some of the statistics presented as backup were a bit startling. The average college student sends only 27 hours per week on all academic activities; going to class, studying and working on assignments. This is less time spent on academics than the typical high school student. However, this lack of effort isn’t reflected in their assessments as there has been little change in the average GPA of college students or graduation rates over the decades. Universities are simply handing out degrees to students that haven’t earned them.

Both students and faculty are to blame. A number of student interviews are quoted in the book and show that students want to put in as little effort in their studies as possible and spend more time socializing and having fun. There is little incentive on the students’ part to work hard because educators don’t push them to perform. Some “ivy league” schools are noted as inflating grades so that the average GPA of their student population stays higher than average. This does a disservice to their students and could lead to a depreciation of the very brand image they are attempting to bolster.

The majority of the book details the dire situation in which we find the educational system today. The last chapter does offer a few solutions. These include: better preparing students for academics prior to reaching college, pulling back on the notion that every student needs to go to college because some simply won’t be able to keep pace, holding higher education faculty to higher standards and improving curriculums to include more reading and writing which was shown to increase critical thinking skills. show less

Richard Arum argues, with data, that colleges are failing and need policing. He argues that the "college for all" mentality that begins in high school is a major factor. Students are not academically prepared, and colleges are catering to them by dumbing classes down. Teachers are not assigning enough work and many students do not put in enough time. Furthermore, colleges are being hit with massive tuition increases, causing students to take more loans, and students form minority or show more low-income families do worse than their peers. Arum finally argues that students' perception of college comes from media such as "Animal House," that college must be social, not intellectual or academic.

I found this to be a fascinating read. I begin my teaching career as a graduate teaching assistant in the 2012-2013 school year. I often found myself reflecting on my own collegiate time. I was academically ready, but not socially ready. I am the opposite of the students in Arum's data set: I saw (and still see) college as an intellectual and academic haven, opposed to the media-driven social network. show less

The statistics presented in Academically Adrift aren't surprising, but they are sobering. Throughout the short book, we find nuggets such as:

* Academically poor students rarely talk with their professors outside of class
* Even top-ranked students try to study the least possible amount of hours per week
* Many students try to avoid "hard" classes and will suffer gladly through boring (and often useless) ones if those result in "easy A"s
* Test scores appear to be negatively correlated with show more studying in groups (ie, group studying often does not help test scores)

Interestingly, the book does mention another side of student "failure" -- the lack of interest professors may take in teaching. For many professors, teaching is not as important in the tenure process as scholarship and service. One very interesting comment made by these authors suggest an implicit contract poor (or, really, most) students have with professors: the professor gives the least amount of work for a guaranteed passing grade in return for the students causing no problems and giving a decent classroom evaluation. (I know I'm guilty of taking classes like that with a few professors, and I made no complaints then.)

Of course, this is problematic, because students find themselves "academically adrift." These "drifting dreamers" have "high ambitions, but no clear life plans for reaching them" and have "limited knowledge about their chosen occupations, about educational requirements, or about future demand for these occupations." Much of the book discusses student test scores on a "critical thinking" test, which suggests many students flounder through college because they are completely unprepared to think analytically.

There is a "how to fix it" chapter, but doing so would require major changes in our current educational system, involving more than just throwing student support workers at students and emphasizing teaching more in tenure decisions. The book is weakest here, mostly due to the major policy decisions that would need to be made, which the authors only vaguely describe.

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LT Haiku:
Major study of
College-age kids shows most can't
Think critically. show less