Huffington Post and Associated Press: The research 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.
One problem is that students just aren’t asked to do much, according to findings in a new book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.” Half of students did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.
“It’s not the case that giving out more credentials is going to make the U.S. more economically competitive,” Richard Arum of New York University, who co-authored the book with Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, said in an interview. “It requires academic rigor … You can’t just get it through osmosis at these institutions.”
Arum and Roksa spread the blame, pointing to students who don’t study much and seek easy courses and a culture at colleges and universities that values research over good teaching. Read more at Huffington Post…..
