A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College : NPR

[hippie]

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/13331...r-leaves-students-adrift&sc=nl&cc=nh-20110209

"Our country today is part of a global economic system, where we no longer have the luxury to put large numbers of kids through college and university and not demand of them that they are developing these higher order skills that are necessary not just for them, but for our society as a whole," Arum says.

There's a huge incentive set up in the system [for] asking students very little, grading them easily, entertaining them, and your course evaluations will be high.

- Richard Arum

Part of the reason for a decline in critical thinking skills could be a decrease in academic rigor; 35 percent of students reported studying five hours per week or less, and 50 percent said they didn't have a single course that required 20 pages of writing in their previous semester.

 

[hippie]

Many will graduate with huge debt w/o learning much of anything.

 

[jack hershey]

Today's youth and young people are really screwed.

Fortunately, the are allowed to remain oblivious to this,

At the other end ofthe spectruM are mlionsof perople who payed by the rules; they will end their lives in povety as well.

Most will spent endless hours wtching tv and uisng texting to while away their whorthless lives.

The middle class ended a while back as well. it replacement is the long hours of work for no marginal benefit but just temporary survival.

You can watch the millions of sheep whose mortgages are upside down and they think they have noe recourse ven if to just walk and use their former mortgage payment for rent.

This huge evaporation of capital is fune to watch. so mush of the population is not sheating others soon it will be hard to find others to cheat.

The US leads the world in slimy unseamly behaviour are it sinks in performance year afer year. Teachers do not know how to teach anymore.

look how more and more rotten ingnorant people have shown up on ET.

Finally our corporate tax became uncompetitive simply because other nations improved theirs beyond ours. OUr government ison the take from top to bottom.

The US is the leading drug consummer of the world.

Over a million untreated vets in the US have PTSD. They will not be able to maintiqin familieis, jobs, friends and they will kill themselves or go homeless till they die.

And all our children just fuck each other to consume low quality time available.

Who is the biggest bullshit vendor on ET this month?

 

[Eight]

They dumbed things down extraordinarily.. I recall the first calculus text I had, it would state "it can be shown that" and a derivative would be exhibited.. it was up to the student to prove those things if they really wanted to understand the course... I took a repeat of the same course thirty years later and the book was COLOR CODED, and it had SIDE BARS, it was all arranged so that the student didn't have to do much work. I was used to the old school style of learning and I flunked the class that I had mastered previously, it was nauseating the way the material was presented...

 

[denner]

Quote from hippie:

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/13331...r-leaves-students-adrift&sc=nl&cc=nh-20110209

"Our country today is part of a global economic system, where we no longer have the luxury to put large numbers of kids through college and university and not demand of them that they are developing these higher order skills that are necessary not just for them, but for our society as a whole," Arum says.

There's a huge incentive set up in the system [for] asking students very little, grading them easily, entertaining them, and your course evaluations will be high.

- Richard Arum

Part of the reason for a decline in critical thinking skills could be a decrease in academic rigor; 35 percent of students reported studying five hours per week or less, and 50 percent said they didn't have a single course that required 20 pages of writing in their previous semester.

IMO, it's been a long trend downwards with each successive generation having less academic discipline than the previous. At some point, it literally became next to impossible to flunk students.

That statistic about not one single course requiring more than 20 pages of writing for greater than 50 percent of the student body is alarming. I never went a semester in college without the requirement...typically multiple courses required it.

 

[Scataphagos]

Much of college today is merely a scam... the cost of which is backed by the taxpayer.

 

[hippie]

Quote from denner:

IMO, it's been a long trend downwards with each successive generation having less academic discipline than the previous. At some point, it literally became next to impossible to flunk students.

That statistic about not one single course requiring more than 20 pages of writing for greater than 50 percent of the student body is alarming. I never went a semester in college without the requirement...typically multiple courses required it.

How about studying 5 hrs per week or less? During my time in college (1976-80), science majors often studied/homeworked 5 hours or more per day.

 

[denner]

Quote from hippie:

How about studying 5 hrs per week or less? During my time in college (1976-80), science majors often studied/homeworked 5 hours or more per day.

Without question...in high school it was 3-4 hours per night, at least, with quite a bit on weekends as well.

College, depending on the major, is all over the map. I knew math majors who were truly gifted with "numbers" who did a minimal amount of homework, pre-med, engineering etc were always homework intensive. That's not to say that alot of the traditional "soft" majors were light on studying time either. Alot of science guys hated history, philosophy, english lit type classes because of the heavy reading load and the 20+ page term papers.

As far as the study habits of today's generation go, by and large I believe that all the gadgets have done a bang up job of distracting students. texting, webchat, etc, etc...stuff that wasn't around at all while I was in college. You actually had to go to a payphone to make a call, so you could actually study without distraction.

 

[Thermactor]

students are discouraged too because word of no jobs after college has trickled back to them; they hope against hope that the job market will be better by the time they get out, but grow wearier as the years grind on and the economy does not improve, and they graduate bitterly, working blue collar jobs alongside high school graduates for the same - or less - pay.

 

[denner]

Quote from Thermactor:

students are discouraged too because word of no jobs after college has trickled back to them; they hope against hope that the job market will be better by the time they get out, but grow wearier as the years grind on and the economy does not improve, and they graduate bitterly, working blue collar jobs alongside high school graduates for the same - or less - pay.

Very true. I read a recent study of college first years and their overall "sentiment" was at all time lows (or since the study was started 30 years ago). Mention was given to a combination of general stress (both financial and academic) and despair over post grad prospects (as word from upperclassmen trickled down). Interestingly enough, the study also cited the stress from home (unemployed or underemployed parents) as another factor.

It's all a part of the "silent great depression", regardless of the inflated asset markets and positive spin put on everything. Even idiots can figure out that something ain't right if given enough evidence.