Literature Review #3: Academically adrift: limited learning on college campuses

 

Originally published in 2011

Citation:

Arum, Richard, and Josipa Roksa. Academically Adrift : Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Summary:

 This book documents a longitudinal study conducted to determine how much college students' critical thinking skills improved from when they first entered college to the end of their sophomore year. Growth in critical thinking was determined using the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which was considered one of the most sophisticated and well-developed performance evaluators at the time. The researchers, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, are both well-respected sociologists who specialize in education and how it affects social stratification.The study ultimately concluded that students generally showed very little signs of growth in critical thinking and writing skills during this time period, improving their skills, on average "by only 0.18 standard deviation" (35). What makes these results even more damning is that other extensive research has found that "seniors had a 0.5 standard deviation advantage over freshmen in the 1990s. In contrast, during the 1980s students developed their skills at twice the rate: seniors had an advantage over freshmen of one standard deviation" (35-36). The data suggests that, at least since the 1980s, there has been a steady decline in the quality of instruction at colleges, and the researchers point to many internal and external factors that have contributed to this trend.

 

 The slow decline of education in America has spawned a new generation of students who enter college with little to no expectations of what they need to do to succeed academically. They are described in the text as "'drifting dreamers,' with 'high ambitions, but no clear life plans for reaching them.' ... They enter college, we believe, largely academically adrift" (3). There are three key issues the authors analyze when attempting to explain the shortcomings of college learning:

1. The privatization of colleges has led to a shift in priorities for professors and college faculty away from rigorous instruction. Professors are incentivized to focus more on their own research, since there is little financial gain from better teaching. In turn, students are happier (and leave better course evaluations) when they can get decent grades from classes without putting in much effort, so both parties mutually benefit from this arrangement. Schools have also diverted resources away from improving the quality of education and toward "nonacademic functions" such as sports programs and other facilities to encourage a social environment on campus. There are many more internal factors that have contributed to schools "drifting away" from undergraduate instruction, but these are just a few of the main points.
2. The emerging concept of "college for all," which is a policy adopted by many high schools to encourage students to "enroll in college and complete bachelor's degrees, even when they are poorly prepared to do so judging from their grade point averages, high school rank, or courses taken" (34). Now that schools are run like a business, college admissions have been much more lenient with who they admit. A study mentioned in the book brings up that "30 percent of students with C grades in high school and 15 percent with grade point averages of C minus or lower have been admitted into four-year colleges" (55). Many students entering college are ill-prepared for the amount of work they need to do to succeed in their chosen field, and end up falling off the path towards academic success.
3. Academic success has become increasingly tied to aspects of race and class, as children from more well-off families tend to receive higher grades and standardized test scores due to the greater resources afforded to them. AP classes and SAT/ACT testing are intrinsically tied to class, as poorer families either cannot afford these tests or outright don't know enough about the tests to understand their importance. Lower-class families also tend to lack any knowledge of higher education, and cannot provide good guidance about the paths available to them in college. This is exacerbated by the "unmarked revolution" in schools that began in the 1970s, where "formal tracking systems were largely abolished, shifting the decision-making about coursework from teachers and counselors to students" (41). Under this system, students from lower-class families are more likely to take classes that don't benefit them, steering them off the path towards success in college.
   

Value:

The academically adrift generation of college students represents the many ways in which certain students are immediately predisposed to academic failure. Student anxiety related to their academic and professional careers stem from a lack of guidance about the resources available to them, and the points made in this book emphasize how important it is to teach students about the skills they need to succeed academically before they finish high school. The point about the growing apathy of college professors leading to easier classes somewhat complicates the general narrative, but it also strengthens the argument that colleges ill-prepare students for their academic futures. When students fall short of their academic ambitions, they tend to consider taking gap years to obtain new perspective, and in the worst-case scenario they may even consider dropping out. Providing students the resources they need to temper their expectations could be the best tool towards preventing student drop-out and circumvent the need for students to delay their academic progress.