Students who have ever wondered how much their college degree is worth may have just gotten their answer: not much.

A book released last week, ‘Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,’ found many college students are not learning much, if anything, compared to previous generations.

The findings show 45 percent of students demonstrated no ‘significant improvement in learning’ during their first two years of college. After four years, learning improves slightly with only 36 percent showing no significant improvement.

The book, which studied 2,300 students across 24 universities, has received varied responses among higher education professionals. While some academics complain about the apparent trend, others have a bone to pick with the study’s methodology and overall conclusion.

‘Do I feel it represents Syracuse University? No, I don’t,’ said Barbara Yonai, director of SU’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. ‘The main issue is that it’s being generalized to all students, all institutions, all across the country. And I’m not convinced.’

The book’s authors, sociology professors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, and Esther Cho of the Social Science Research Council turned down interview requests for this article because of the large number of media requests they are currently fielding.

The study used the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that was administered to students in their freshman, sophomore and senior years. It measures three broad-based skills seen as essential in the 21st century job market: critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.

Yonai, who heads the university’s efforts in regularly assessing and researching SU’s institutional effectiveness and student learning, has no problem with the CLA. But the conclusion that students aren’t learning anything is unwarranted, she said.

‘‘Academically Adrift’ simply doesn’t match what she knows of SU’s own student performance,’ she said.

Amy Lutz is concerned about using a standardized test like the CLA to determine if students are learning. Lutz, an associate professor of sociology at SU, said in an e-mail that it is a problem when testing measures are not tied to the substance of the courses that students take.

‘For example, we cannot know from this study whether someone has learned Spanish, literature or engineering content from the courses that they have taken,’ she said. These questions illustrate one of the study’s limitations, she said.

A bigger equation to the picture is whose responsibility it is to improve student learning outcomes, Lutz said.

‘What do we do if rigorous teaching methods are less popular with the students,’ Lutz said, ‘and the professors who use them receive lower course evaluations and enrollments?’

Alexander McCormick, director of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which SU participates in, is worried about what the study’s measurements do not tell us. They don’t tell us anything, for example, about whether chemistry students are learning chemistry, he said.

‘Almost everyone would agree that global awareness is also an important skill, and the ability to work with others and the ability to engage in civil discourse are also very important skills,’ McCormick said.

These are skills, he said, that are not necessarily taught or tested in college. Rather, they’re developed along the way.

Students reward teachers who teach easy classes and punish those who teach more difficult classes, McCormick said.

Professor demands are changing, too. Incentives for professors have shifted from an emphasis on teaching to research and publication, McCormick said.

‘Faculty members say that they can’t make tenure without publishing,’ he said. ‘On top of that, you have this climate on which colleges tend to reward publication and scholarship over teaching.’

The result of this tends to be that teachers ask less of students, and students are OK with that. Students don’t ask much of their teachers in return, McCormick said.

‘That’s a sobering situation,’ he said, ‘especially in this climate in which we’re talking about the need to increase the number of college graduates.’

The latest Census data reveals a rise in college degrees in the United States. And for the second year, SU has seen a record high number of undergraduate applications. As of Tuesday, 25,309 applications for the 2011-12 academic year have been received.

It’s a combination of more students seeing college as a steppingstone to their career and higher education professionals seeing incoming students as less prepared for actual college life that is partly to blame for decreased rates of learning, McCormick said. He said he thinks colleges need to help students develop skills needed for college.

‘Recognize that academic rigor and academic challenge is valuable and is what a lot of students go to college for,’ McCormick said. ‘It’s a wake-up call for colleges to get back to those priorities.’

blbump@syr.edu

 

Published on January 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm