Are colleges letting us down?

I remember the first piece of advice I received when I started college in the fall of 1961. "Don't learn to play bridge, "said the dorm RA, "it's the surest way to flunk out."

The members of my fraternity were dead set against having a TV in the house. They saw it as a time-waster and a start along the road to flunking out. When Kennedy was assassinated, we had to trudge to the student union to find one of the few TV's on campus.

How things have changed! Kathleen Parker addresses the college problem in her September 30 Washington Post column, Our Unprepared Graduates.

"We often hear lamentations about declining educational quality, but the focus is usually misplaced on SAT scores and graduation rates. Missing from the conversation is the quality of what’s being taught. Meanwhile, we are mistakenly wed to the notion that more people going to college means more people will find jobs....Fundamentally, students aren’t learning what they need to compete for the jobs that do exist."

"The failure of colleges and universities to teach basic skills, while coddling [students] with plush dorms and self-directed “study,” is a dot-connecting exercise for Uncle Shoulda, who someday will say — in Chinese — “How could we have let this happen?”

"A 2010 study published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 87 percent of employers believe that higher-education institutions have to raise student achievement if the United States is to be competitive in the global market. Sixty-three percent say that recent college grads don’t have the skills they need to succeed. And, according to a separate survey, more than a quarter of employers say entry-level writing skills are deficient."

Parker refers to a new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, based on a study by  Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. Among the conclusions of their study:

"Our findings confirm earlier warning signs that college students on average are learning less, even as tuition costs in many institutions have risen sharply and competition for jobs has increased. With a large and diverse sample of over 3,000 students drawn from 29 four-year accredited colleges and universities, our study has broad implications." 

"45% of our sample showed little or no evidence of improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing after two years. After four years at college, 36% showed no significant growth."


"If your association is with a highly selective institution, you may be thinking that these findings only apply to other colleges and universities. That is not so. There is more variation within institutions than across institutions: in other words, even students at the “best” schools have too often been provided with ways to navigate through four years of college with little academically asked of them. If students are not exposed to rigorous academic courses, they are likely to leave college with limited growth in the core collegiate skills that we measured. We found that certain programs and majors were consistently less successful in building reasoning and writing skills. Students in education, communications, and business had the lowest measurable gains." [Emphasis mine.]


According to Parker: "College students may be undereducated, but they’re not dumb and many feel short-changed. A recent Roper Organization study found that nearly half of recent graduates don’t think they got their money’s worth. The problem with education isn’t money — we spend plenty — but quality. Yet, instead of figuring out how to make education pay future dividends, higher-educational institutions are building better dorms with flat-screen TVs, movie theaters and tanning salons, according to a recent CNN report. If parents aren’t furious, they’re not paying attention."

Colleges have changed. They now view their students as "customers" and try their best to give the customer what he/she wants. 

Note to college folks: What your customer "wants" is a degree from your institution involving as little work as possible, leaving as much time as possible for fine dining experiences and the social arts. What your customer "needs" is something else entirely.