Posted on 07/15/2019 4:29:09 AM PDT by reaganaut1
We present results from a five-year effort to design promising online and text-message interventions to improve college achievement through several distinct channels. From a sample of nearly 25,000 students across three different campuses, we find some improvement from coaching-based interventions on mental health and study time, but none of the interventions we evaluate significantly influences academic outcomes (even for those students more at risk of dropping out). We interpret the results with our survey data and a model of student effort. Students study about five to eight hours fewer each week than they plan to, though our interventions do not alter this tendency. The coaching interventions make some students realize that more effort is needed to attain good grades but, rather than working harder, they settle by adjusting grade expectations downwards. Our study time impacts are not large enough for translating into significant academic benefits. More comprehensive but expensive programs appear more promising for helping college students outside the classroom.
(Excerpt) Read more at nber.org ...
In other words, let us try another way. We don't know if it'll work, but it'll cost ya.
We already know this is true of Headstart. Common sense tells you it would be even less effective for college kids.
The world needs plumbers, carpenters and roofers a lot more then we need philosophers...
“The world needs plumbers, carpenters and roofers a lot more then we need philosophers...”
You don’t SERIOUSLY think that a person who can sweat copper is more important to society than the 835,670,234th interpretation of the meaning of Hamlet, do you? Man, get a life.
IIRC when I was in college, the rule of thumb is that most classes require about 40 hours of outside work, 50 if there are labs. Harder classes require more.
Used to take six to seven coursed per semester three semesters a year. Got out a year early. Studied and worked hard those years. Little debt.
“The world needs plumber” not philosophers.
Yeah, I get your point.
But, dont continue the meme that blue collar neans block head. Modern Auto Techs, “Grease Monkeys”, are often very bright folks.
AC techs need to know what they’re doing.
Machinists are some pretty exacting, and mathmarically astute eggheads.
Man, I used to like ‘sweating copper’. Nowadays it’s glueing PVC. Not the same.
For the hard sciences (I was a chemistry major) the rule of thumb was three hours outside of class for every hour in class. For a full class load, that works out to about 40 - 50 hours of "homework" per week.
I found that to be just about right.
I graduated high school in 1972 and went to community college.The first year I majored in Pinball during the breaks and never really went to class. I dropped out of it all and tried again in 1972. It was different. I LOVED chemistry and became the “go-to” student all the others would go to to get answers. But that lasted only a few weeks and the teachers went on strike. I was done with college.
Interestingly, just this year, thanks to Youtube, I’m becoming fascinated with chemistry again.
Tell me this is a joke! How much of our taxpayer money went to this CRAP?
>
The world needs plumbers, carpenters and roofers a lot more then we need philosophers...
>
Well, that Leftist “philosophers” rely upon F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S and couldn’t articulate a valid (counter)point...
“PVC”? You’re way behind. Today they crimp PEX.
A couple of years ago, I came in late one night at an airport, and needed a rental car (small southern airport). Most of the car rental shops were shut down, so I had one single choice.
One employee left there, and it was the manager....young mid-20s black gal who helped me and we had a 10-minute chat while she did the paperwork and wrapped up things.
She was a recent college grad....four-year degree. Twenty years prior, most of the heads of these car rental shops were 40-to-50 year old guys...no college. In her case, she came out of college and no active recruitment of her (worthless degree), and this low-paying car rental manger job was it. She had some hopes of moving up in a couple of years.
I didn’t say much to discourage her but this was an obvious waste of education.
You have mentioned several trades that are among the blue-collar elite. I always enjoy talking to whatever tradesmen come to my house, picking their brains a bit, and trying to learn something.
Honestly, I think that one of the lowest aspects of America’s elite culture is its denigration of anyone who works with both his hands and his brain. Looking back, I wish I had gone into tool-and-die making or something similarly rigorous — and rewarding both for the job challenge and the compensation.
My problem started when I scored off the chart on my verbal SATs. I was clearly college material — indeed, my parents and I never even considered me going into a trade because I was a straight-A student who was neither athletic nor dexterous. In other words, a perfect bookworm.
So, to make a long story longer, I wound up spending 25 years as a reporter and editor for various local rags around the South.
And here’s the rub: There was no money in it, the hours were long, and the pressure fairly constant. Yet in all those years, I was never bored and never doubted that such talents as God gave me were being put to good use keeping our readers informed.
And one more thing: Even writing for the Podunk Gazette, I never would have seen interesting things or met interesting people to the same degree in any other profession. As I said, I was never bored — even in zoning hearings.
About midway though the 25 years, I yielded to family pressure and got a presumably well-paid and secure job doing PR work for a government agency. I was gone in just a year — and was never more relieved to lose a job.
So, tell me, FRiends — have I wasted my life? Yes, the world needs plumbers more than Shakespeare scholars. But how does a young man make a living whose only detectable talent is his way with words?
Most professors assign a ton of work and heaven help you if your prof does the “flipped classroom” model, which ends in classroom time spent in daily group study sessions that resemble a text based scavenger hunt where everyone gets spends too much time trying to figure out group dynamics since these are mostly assigned. This reduces the professor’s input to being a moderator and assignor of readings. Then there are the social justice and “enrichment” activities that are intended to be “nudges”, so yeah, most people are going to prioritize what has to get done and leave the “nudges” behind wherever possible.
I can tell you that whoever came up with the well meaning flipped classroom, nudges, and other unholy progeny of academic research projects likely watered with the tears of grad students should burn in hell!
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that when what these guys did didn’t work that they would decide that more money was what was called for.
I never liked it, and I never got good at it (easy to see my slobbering). I look at the work done by the Illegals in my house and it’s pure art, not one spec of soldier where it doesn’t belong. I should be able to come close, but I can’t! Bites.
Why do kids need college when they already know everything
Funny, but my experience has been far more stupid destructiveness and far less “art.”
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