A quick note before I teach this morning: There are higher-ed stories in the New York Times, Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed this morning on Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011). I talked very briefly with Arum about his project in the fall at one conference, and we're both agreed that the data source he and Roksa used for the book, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, is better as a research tool than as an accountability mechanism (see pp. 140-141 for a brief discussion on that point). Arum and Roksa discuss some of the concerns around the CLA on pp. 25-26 of the book, and the phrase in the title comes from p. 26. I am on the skeptical end on the use of the CLA, and I wish the authors had engaged the generic-vs.-subject issue more thoroughly, but it's fine as a research tool.
That tentative use of the CLA is probably going to be lost in the discussion this week as people frame the book as "proof" if whatever pet theory they have about higher ed. It's important to keep in mind that while this is an important study, it's based on something that it too fragile to make it definitive. More on the book later this week, if I can juggle my time well enough.
Arum is interviewed here —
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/edlife/09books-t.html
Whatever else this article suggests, it is apparent that the “bridge to the middle-class” is collapsing under our feet, as we watch. (See caveat below)
I know Roksa’s work, she was a student of Arum’s, and she is brilliant. You should see her vita! Arum is no slouch either.
But aren’t they making the mistake of sampling on the dependent variable in the interview — wages? earnings? All these, one way or the other, are job characteristics. So, we need to be asking about competing factors for “jobs” — in other words.
In the very least, however, this shows that — for whatever reason — the adulthood transition function of postsecondary education appears to be breaking down. Either that, or we have been wrong all along about the adulthood-transition role of higher ed.
The term “collapsing” is part of a declination narrative. If Arum and Roksa’s work holds up, what makes you think there was some golden age of higher-ed?
Good point! Maybe all those years when everything was hunky-dory never really were — years before credential inflation/open access kicked in and you had to have a degree to get a job; before the federal and state government(s) subsidized higher ed the way that they do now; before it cost an arm and a leg (student loan debt burden) to attend.
But all these things — and more — have altered higher education beyond recognition.
What the study leaves us with is not an exemplary exercise in how to conduct research using the CLA — no! This study is a rare longitudinal view of college outcomes — that’s what makes this study important. Who gives a flip about what CLA does or does not show: I want to know about the effectiveness of postsecondary ed for transitioning youth to adulthood!
I got my initial info about this from a column by someone from “TheHechinger Report” in the Sacramento Bee that was linked in Dean Dad’s comments on January 18. My comment in his blog is quoted verbatim between the dashes below:
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That article about Critical Thinking was interesting until we got to the inevitable “decline of civilization” comments from various experts. How can you compare the results of an Unprecedented One-of-the-First Study with guesses about college life 30 or 50 years ago? You can’t. I’m pretty sure we spent 50% of our time socializing in the dorms back in the good old days.
I’m impressed that almost two thirds !! of the study group made significant gains in critical thinking, even if the journalist chose to emphasize the negative side of the same results.
And I was stunned to learn that students in “business, education, social work and communications” showed the least gains, not to mention that “students learned more when asked to do more”. Who would ever have imagined such a result.
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You must have been bothered by that list of departmental units, but there is more than one way to look at these results as I suggest. As I pointed out and you also note in your reply to Glen, commentary based on perceiving a single data point as if it were a century long time series does not show any critical thinking on the part of the commentator.
I would also add that I think I would not have shown any significant improvement in my critical thinking skills after 4 years of college because I entered college with spectacularly good ones due to my high school experiences. I’m sure I improved, but not within the uncertainties of an instrument like they used.
Machine just ate my reply — yes, I agree. We need to be more cautious when extrapolating.
I wonder if the upwards age-shifting of college populations accounts for any of the problems improving learning?