Don't know much about...well, anything

A side note before I start: I want to blog a little about Egypt, but I'm going to first re-read Leila Ahmed's A Border Passage, her memoir about immigrating to the US from Cairo. It's got a solid bit about Egyptian history, and I think I need that refresher.

There's this new book out that's causing a stir. It's called Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, written by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and published by the University of Chicago press. I haven't read it (it's about $70), so I'm drawing on the many articles that are summarizing and analyzing it.

In their book, Arum and Roksa posit that students don't learn very much in their four years in college. How did they come to this conclusion? They tracked 2,300 students in 24 colleges and universities, using a variety of methods, including surveys, transcript analyses, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that (according to their website) "presents realistic problems that require students to analyze complex materials and determine the relevance to the task and credibility.  Students' written responses to the tasks are evaluated to  assess their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems and communicate clearly and cogently." Arum and Roksa found that 45 percent of (traditional, full-time) students didn't improve significantly in those areas during their first two years, that 36 percent didn't improve significantly over all four years, and that those who did improve only improved a little.

In other words, we're not learning in college. It's quite a damning conclusion.