Good news: Study confirms that college is pretty much a total waste of time

You don’t even need to read the article; just follow the link and check out the graph in the left-hand sidebar. What’s tuition up to these days at private universities, parents? About $30-35,000?

Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college, in large part because colleges don’t make academics a priority, a new report shows.

Instructors tend to be more focused on their own faculty research than teaching younger students, who in turn are more tuned in to their social lives, according to the report, based on a book titled Academically Adrift:

Limited Learning on College Campuses. Findings are based on transcripts and surveys of more than 3,000 full-time traditional-age students on 29 campuses nationwide, along with their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that gauges students’ critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills. After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.

Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows. Despite learning a little bit of jack and a whole lot of squat, students in the survey nonetheless managed a 3.2 GPA on average according to the study’s author, which tells you most of what you need to know about grade inflation and the rigors of modern higher learning. Another fun detail from the same study via McClatchy: Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin…

The study’s authors also found that large numbers of students didn’t enroll in courses requiring substantial work. In a typical semester, a third of students took no courses with more than 40 pages of reading per week. Half didn’t take a single course in which they wrote more than 20 pages over the semester.

If you think false media narratives are easily absorbed now, wait until the Leaders of Tomorrow graduate and take their place in society. I keep thinking that the combination of a poor economy and ludicrous higher-education costs will solve this problem to some degree by re-normalizing the idea of entering the labor force after high school. If you’re a kid who’s unenthused about incurring a mountain of debt for the privilege of four more years of study with no guarantee of finding a job afterward to fund the repayment, why not pound the pavement for an entry-level/trainee position somewhere instead? The pay will be rotten to start and the lack of a diploma will make some future employers think twice, but in the meantime you’re debt-free and building skills — and if I’m right about re-normalization, the “no diploma” stigma will fade a bit culturally over time. The one flaw in my theory: Er, there are no entry-level jobs out there for kids, are there?

I can't speak for other colleges, nor can I answer for the current state of academia.

You are sadly mistaken, sir, No one learns how to think without some degree of instruction. And high school is not the location to learn much of anything.
High school education is by definition compulsory. One had little choice of courses. Mostly, high school education is a cross between a manufacturing process and simply adolescent sitting. Most students attend class because they have to be there.

College education is voluntary. Its expensive and requires one to skip at least four years of work.
Again I can speak for no university except my own. No one attempted to indoctrinate me. As I said, professors had views - frequently strongly held views - but were open to the opinions of students. Free, frank, and open discussion was encouraged. No one (certainly not me or anyone I knew) was penalized for views contrary to those expressed by professors. Professors insisted only that views be clearly conceived and expressed - and that those views be backed by solid evidence. The evidence presented was required to be factual and interpretations derived from that evidence must be within the realm of credibility.

For example, one professor said that we could argue that a glass was half full or half empty, but we could not say that the glass did not exist, when we could put our hands around it. And he said we could argue whether the material used to construct the glass was Waterford crystal or common table glass; that is we could argue about the value of the glass. But we could not say the fluid in the glass was gin, when a chemical analysis demonstrated the fluid was water.

Reading lists were long and included books from a variety of points of view; and, at least in my classes, professors were open to students’ ideas about adding a book not listed on the reading lists.

I feel terribly sorry for you. I don't know where (or if) you attended college. If you were indoctrinated, you missed a time of life that could have been one of great joy. It was for me.

I feel terribly sorry for you. I don't know where (or if) you attended college. If you were indoctrinated, you missed a time of life that could have been one of great joy. It was for me.

Although there were plenty of idiot left-wing professors who spewed nonsense that I argued with in class, I didn't get indoctrinated. You know why? Because I already knew how to think for myself before I ever got to college, or high school, for that matter. Given that you seem to think that you lacked this skill until you came under the guiding hands of your divine professors, I'd have to say that your level of "thinking" is probably sub-par. Some things can be learned, but not taught.

Also, one of the nice things about this world is that there are cool things called books which people can read without some teacher holding their hands and whispering in their ears, which impart all kinds of information, opinion, and wonderful little stories. Young people who partake of those tend to learn how to think long before they ever get to one of our institutions of "higher learning". If you truly feel that the level of thought you were exposed to and forced to ingest as an college student represents a higher level than that which one can achieve when one thinks for himself, then I feel bad for what you'll never know.

A perfect analogy for all this just popped into my head: once upon a time, US Army Basic Training was simply that - training, because most of the guys who came into the service already had a lifetime of good physical fitness behind them. Nowadays, recruiters have to reject many for enlistment who are too fat, and the ones who do get in have to be physically rebuilt once in training just so they can perform the minimal requirements of the job. Our population's physical fitness has been dumbed down to where routine abilities are now considered almost exceptional. Likewise, our population has been dumbed down intellectually to where incoming college kids have to take high school or junior high school remedial English and math classes just to get to the basics for college level classes, which they might be lucky to hit by the time they graduate. Meanwhile, professors now feel that it is their job to teach kids how to think rather than putting them through the rigors of a classical education, which actually requires absorbing knowledge, and this is largely because those professors are dumbed down as well, and couldn't hold a candle, knowledge-wise, to your average high school graduate 100 years ago.

So, you can go ahead and feel enlightened because some dumbed-down college professors fed you dumbed-down curriculum because you and all of the other dumbed-down students never bothered to learn how to think for yourselves by cracking a book or solving a problem when you were younger, but, for the love of God, don't go pretending you're Plato.

I studied under several professors whose views were left of center, yet not one made the slightest attempt to indoctrinate me. All encouraged freedom of thought and expression. None of my professors believed or seemed to believe that that they possessed any sort of divinity or that their views came from heaven carved on tablets of stone.

Whether my level of thinking is sub-par is for others to say. I would point out that several of my professors warned against rash judgments about the intelligence of others. None of my professors were perfect in any sense of the word, but all were humble enough to understand that unless one possessed divine omniscience, all categorical judgments should be taken with a grain of salt.

You are correct. Some things can be learned but not taught; but some refuse to learn, regardless of the method of instruction. And, please remember, that humility is the most difficult virtue to learn.

Thinking for ones self is very important, but such cogitation rarely imparts a respect for the opinions (and rights) of others. If memory serves, Muhammed constructed an entire religion, while thinking for himself in a cave.

I make no judgments about the current state of higher education. But I will state that if one expects students to possess thinking skills before entering college, one lives in a fantasy world. The current state of elementary and secondary education is so depressing as to drive a concerned citizen to thoughts of suicide when pre-college education is contemplated at any length.

A classical education does impart an ability to think and the ability to resist indoctrination. Another value of classical education is the ability to spot flaws in reasoning. I seem to remember that one fallacy was ad hominem attacks. You may consider my education “dumbed down”, but since you have no knowledge of the content, the use of epithets is little more than a personal attack. And thus not worth comment.

As to Basic Training in the US Army, I know little except from personal recollection. During the Vietnam War, I lived near Ft Jackson. The pitiful state of the training recruits received stood in stark contrast to the excellent training I received in boot camp at Paris Island.

I make no judgments about the current state of higher education. But I will state that if one expects students to possess thinking skills before entering college, one lives in a fantasy world.

See, this is the part where we have our greatest disagreement. I really don't see how you can claim that thinking begins at college. A person generally enters college at around 18, which is no longer a child. If one has not learned how to think for himself by that time, he will not learn it from anyone else. What he will learn from these professors, these self-styled guardians of knowledge, is WHAT to think, because if his head is empty of the ability to think when he gets to college, that hole will be filled with the thinking of those teaching the class, regardless of whether they are left-wing, right-wing or whatever.

Think of it this way - the human brain is like a gun. You aim it, you fire it at will. The only thing that the universities should be doing is feeding you ammunition. If they have to actually put the gun parts into your head, then show you where the trigger is, then your gun will fire the way they want it to fire, and at the targets they want.

My big objection to your seemingly innocuous assertion that your professors taught you how to think is that your attitude shows a blind acceptance that is all too common these days in our population and leads, quite frankly, to a level of gullibility and mindless obedience that I think is at the heart of our country's decline. These academics are not gods, and, quite often, they are not even competent academics. Virtually everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt. They may present facts incorrectly. They may present correct facts, but a flawed or fraudulent interpretation of those facts. They may lie outright, or they may simply not know what they are talking about, all the while being supremely confident that they are masters of the subject area. Once you understand that, it should be a mere baby-step to the conclusion that such people have no business teaching anyone how to think, and that any attempt to do so is an abominable breech of their station.

Furthermore, any passive acceptance of their claim to teach people how to think is merely a horrific subservience and subordination of one's own individuality and, quite frankly, humanity to a group of people whose only claim to such an honor is that they have had other like-minded people declare them to be elite. That acceptance is on par with the attitude that everything the government does is ok because they are the government and they know what's best for you. It is repugnant to a country of people who claim to be free, or at least value freedom.

I never said that thinking begins in college.
By learning to think, I mean to think analytically, critically, rationally, rigorously, and to express those thoughts in a logical, coherent manner. More importantly, to learn to think means to have ones thoughts exposed to public comment (and occasional ridicule) and to be willing to accept criticism and learn from it.

I went to a private high school, one of the best in my area of the country. The instruction was excellent, but nothing taught or experienced prepared for the sort of examination to which my thoughts would be subjected in college.

The human brain is not a gun or a computer, both of which perform complex operations that were designed by others.
The brain is capable of subtlety and creativity.
Unlike any machine, the brain can heal itself, as we witness with the recovery of Rep Giffords.
Yet for all its power, the brain must be trained and not only trained but trained to be trained. The brain must learn how to learn. The brain must learn how to discriminate. Before the brain can become creative, it must be disciplined. And that sort of discipline does not happen in high school.
I'm not arguing that an occasional prodigy doesn't express itself at a very early age, but such individuals are the exception and not the rule. In fact, their existence proves the rule.

I “accepted” very little of the substance of my professors’ arguments. To this day, I still laugh at the folly of some of their opinions.
I learned from my professors not opinions, but the willingness to criticize - and especially to criticize the opinions expressed in class by anyone and everyone. I learned not to passively accept anyone’s opinion. And I learned how to criticize. I learned how to separate fact from opinion.

I feel sorry for you. If you went to college, your years must have been miserable indeed.

I feel sorry for you. If you went to college, your years must have been miserable indeed.

Bah. Getting a degree was nothing more than getting a necessary ticket punched. There was no reason for it to be miserable, regardless of its validity. One just has to recognize it for what it is. So many students get those warm and fuzzy feelings from college because they wrap themselves in the illusion of knowledge and wisdom, rather than acquiring any actual knowledge or wisdom. If they manage to grow as they go through life, they eventually realize how much of it was just pablum. However, it appears that you still haven't recognized things for what they are, and for that, I feel bad for you. I'm sure your college years were pure bliss, in the same way that naive childhood can be, but it is sad to see in adulthood.

Those who scoff do so at their own peril.
Its useless and foolish to argue with you.
You have a closed mind - the sort of mind that college is designed to open. I admit that - at least these days - college may lead in the opposite direction, but at its best, college should develop the tools to open the mind.
You have a cynical mind, a mind that sneers and denigrates any experience that may broaden and enlarge the human spirit.
Worse, you have a bitter mind - a mind that claims to stand on principle, yet whose words betray an envious spirit governed by a pride that will not allow for an admission of error, dissenting opinion, or different experience.

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