The higher ed world is all abuzz about the release of a brand new book by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. David Glenn of the Chronicle of Higher Education calls this book an "indictment of the American higher-education system" while Kevin Cary of the Education Sector observed that it reveals higher ed to be "the epic fail to end them all." We tend to agree with both of these assessments.
In the past we have argued that colleges have produced a surplus of college graduates (at least in terms of the labor market demand for workers with a college education). Considering this labor market reality, we further argued that it doesn't make sense for taxpayers to continue shouldering massive public subsidies to higher education. Some have responded to our claim by saying that education is, to a certain extent, it's own reward, so even if students do end up "underemployed" (i.e., in below college-level jobs) at least they come out with a well-rounded education.
Arum and Roksa's work suggests, however, that whatever students are getting out of college, for a significant proportion of them, learning isn't one of the outcomes. Looking at the academic progression (as measured by performance on the Collegiate Learning Assessment) of more than 2,000 students at 24 different colleges, Arum and Roksa found that, for the first two years of college, 45 percent of students saw no significant gains in their CLA performance. Over the course of four years, fully 36 percent of students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning." In other words, after four years of college, nearly 4o percent of all students learned essentially nothing! Because Arum and Roksa only look at students who stay in school (in other words, they don't count dropouts), their results could be understating the number of students who don't learn anything. No wonder Scott Jaschick's summary of Academically Adrift is so apt: "If the purpose of a college education is for students to learn, academe is failing." Exactly.
The findings by Arum and Roksa are important to note, primarily because they quite clearly demonstrate a fundamental disconnect between the current higher ed system and the real educational needs of students. For example, Arum and Roksa find that students who experience more rigorous classroom instruction and have professors with higher expectations generally tend to have larger learning gains. Of course, this is really only a common-sense observation, but, given the atrocious decline in higher ed standards over time (Arum and Roksa report that their data indicate students nowadays typically spend fewer than 30 hours a week in academic pursuits), it is a desperately needed denunciation of the modern Ivory Tower. Furthermore, Arum and Roksa also found that students who study by themselves tend to learn more, suggesting that "collaborative learning"– a new Holy Grail in higher ed these days– may be the wrong approach.
At another, deeper level, Arum and Roksa's research supports CCAP's belief that the effect of college attendance on future earnings is often overstated by higher education advocates. While it is true that college graduates do, on average, earn more over their lifetimes than those possessing only a high school degree, it has not been demonstrated convincingly that college attendance causes this wage differential. Economic theory suggests that wages depend a good deal on the productivity of a worker, with those workers who are more productive commanding higher wages. Thus, to say that college attendance itself causes a wage premium for graduates, one would have to demonstrate that the skills attained in college make an individual more productive than those who bypass college. Yet, to attain such productivity-enhancing skills, students would actually have to learn something in college, something that Arum and Roksa suggest is not happening, pointing out that:
[Students] might graduate, but they are failing to develop the higher-order cognitive skills that it is widely assumed college students should master. These findings are sobering and should be a cause for concern.
So then, why does the wage premium exist? It would be incorrect to assume that nobody learns anything in college, and those who do learn job-relevant skills in college likely bump up the average wage for college graduates. However, a good case can be made that the same people who attain college degrees likely also possess other attributes (e.g., above average intelligence, motivation, leadership abilities, etc.) that make them more valuable to employers, and thus higher paid. In this case, it is not college that creates the higher wage, but rather a matter of correlation. Regardless, Arum and Roksa have revealed an alarming reality that for many, college is a problematic investment.
Thanks to Jonathan Robe and Matthew Denhart / Blogs Forbes
No comments:
Post a Comment