Academically Adrift (cont.)

Reading Chapter Three, Pathways through Colleges Adrift:  (starting p. 59)

“The goal for students was to minimize the former [academics] and spend as much time as possible on the latter [social learning].” (p. 59)

Alexander Astin (What Matters in College?) and Vincent Tinto, theories of student development

Questions:  “What is the character of the relationships between students and their professors?  What are students’ experiences with formal coursework?  How do students perceive their peers and their institutional cultures at the colleges they attend?  What sort of financial burdens do these students face as they attempt to navigate the first two years of campus life?” (p. 61)

Two sources of variation:  (1)  students’ social background, high school context, and academic preparation; and, (2) students’ academic, social, and financial realities across college campuses

Q:  To what extent do students’ college experiences differ with respect to faculty interaction, academic requirements associated with their classes, types of courses taken, and credits and grades received? (p. 62)

Students with less academic preparation, from households where parents had a high school diploma or less, and from less selective institutions met with faculty less than all other students

Q:  How hard are students working in college?  And what sort of curricular expectations do professors have for students during their second year in college?  (p. 69)

Average = 12 hours per week studying; 37% less than 5 hours per week preparing

50% of student in the sample reported that they had not taken a single course during the prior semester that required more than twenty pages of writing; one-third had not taken one that required even forty pages of reading per week (p. 71) (see entire 1^st and 2^nd paras)

Reading Chapter Four, Channeling Students’ Energies towards Learning:   (starting on p. 91)

“From this perspective, colleges operate primarily as sorting mechanisms.” (p. 91) ???

“This view of schooling as a mechanism that primarily works to reproduce, exacerbate, and certify preexisting individual-level differences is widely shared and embraced throughout American society.” (p. 92)

Questions:  “How are different college experiences related to development of students’ skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing?  And more importantly, are specific academic and social activities associated with learning, after we adjust for what students bring to higher education?  Regardless of who walks through the doors of higher education, can institutions shape students’ experiences in ways that facilitate learning?” (p. 92)

High expectations by faculty, “when faculty have high expectations, students learn more” (p. 93)

Figure 4.9, p. 118 (final model in a graphical form)

Reading Chapter Five, A Mandate for Reform:  (starting p. 121)

“At least 45 percent of students in our sample did not demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in CLA performance during the first two years of college.”  (p. 121)

(p. 124), a social problem (2^nd para) but not a crisis ???

And scarier still, (p. 125), “Socialization of elementary and secondary school students is a core institutional function [a crisis in moral authority], but academic learning at colleges unfortunately has not been recognized as such.”

Solutions:

1.  Student preparation, rigorous academic work in high school needed; also, “Many students emerging from these schools [elementary and secondary schools] have also not developed norms, values, and behaviors conducive to assuming productive lives as responsible adults …” (p. 126); “Youth today have been unable to develop a sense of purpose in their lives not only because of general changes in parenting and the larger culture, Damon argues, but because schools have turned away from accepting responsibility for youth socialization and oral education.  Elementary and secondary educational reform has focused almost exclusively on improving students’ standardized test scores.”
2. Higher education leadership, “Institutions need to develop a culture of learning if undergraduate education is to be improved.” (p. 127); p. 130, Chickering and Gamson, Kuh, NSSE, Wabash National Study; (p. 133) de-emphasis in graduate study on teaching

Completed January 12, 2011

Academically Adrift, 2011, Arum & Roksa

Reading the Methodological Appendix first:  (starting p. 145)

Determinants of College Learning (DCL) dataset in partnership with the Council for Aid to Education (CAE), which initiated the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) in fall 2005; follow-up spring 2007

Social Science Research Council (SSRC) joined project in 2007 and added other fields (demographics) for a total sample size of 2,322 (analyzable) students

Reading Chapter One, College Cultures and Student Learning:  (starting p. 1)

Critical thinking and complex reasoning as the foundation for democratic citizenship and economic productivity (p. 2)

“students’ human capital—knowledge, skills and capacities that will be rewarded in the labor market”

Q:  But what if increased educational attainment is not equivalent to enhanced individual capacity for critical thinking and complex reasoning? (p. 2)

Q:  If students are able to receive high marks and make steady progress towards their college degrees with such limited academic effort, must not faculty bare some responsibility for the low standards that exist in these settings? (p. 5)

“Rather than asking whether students are learning anything at college and designing accountability regimes to address the absence of measurable gains at underperforming schools, we need first to identify the specific factors associated with variation in student learning across and within institutions.” (p. 19)

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), “As young adults, are they aware of what they do not know?  If students cannot identify or define learning and critical thinking skills, how will they know whether they have obtained them?” (p. 27)

National Study of Student Learning (NSSL), Pascarella, mid-1990’s

Four core lessons: (1) too often undergraduate students in four year colleges and universities are academically adrift; (2) gains are low; (3) individual learning is unequal; (4) notable variation both within and across institutions associated with measurable differences in students’ educational experiences (p. 30)

Reading Chapter Two, Origins and Trajectories:  (starting p. 33)

Eighteen million students in more than 4,300 degree granting institutions; 90% of high school students expect to attend college; 70% enroll in either two- or four-year institutions = assumed right (NOT privilege) OR expected obligation AND regardless of academic preparation or performance! (pp. 33-34)

(p. 37)  last paragraph, “The skills and predispositions are in turn rewarded in school, granting children from more privileged families higher grades, better course placements, and other positive educational outcomes.  Since schools expect but do not teach these cultural competencies, children from less advantaged families are left to fend for themselves, and in the process they typically reproduce their class location.”

Q:  To what extent do patterns of learning in higher education reflect the principles of social mobility or social reproduction?  (p. 38) AND “do colleges reproduce or reduce inequality in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills among students from different family backgrounds and racial/ethnic groups?”

1.  Students who parents had more education do better.
2. White, then Asian, then Hispanic, then African-American have the highest to lowest CLA scores where White and Hispanic have the highest increases between freshman and sophomore year (p. 39)

Q:  How much do observed differences in CLA performance reflect students’ academic experiences before entering college?  (p. 40)

Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods

(p. 47) Questions: “Is inequality in learning over the first two years of college by race/ethnicity and family background, as measured by improvement in CLA scores, a reflection of differences in academic preparation?  If we compared two students, both of whom took no AP classes, but one of whom had college-educated parents while the other one did not, would they improve at different rates on the CLA?  Or if we compared an African-American student with a high GPA at a predominantly white high school to a white student with the same characteristics, would they have the same rate of change in CLA scores over the first two years of college?  In general, if students had the same background characteristics and academic experiences, would we still observe gaps in CLA performance among students from different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups?”

Q:  What is the difference in 2007 scores between students from different family backgrounds if we adjust for their initial level of critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills? (p. 48)

1. Graduate/professional parental education confers a 60 point advantage over high school or less parental education
2. Being White conferred a 136 point advantage over being African-American

Q:  What could help explain these differences?  (p. 49)

1. High schools with most White or mostly non-White students
2. English language learners
3. Number of AP courses taken
4. High school GPA
5. SAT scores

Q:   What about academic preparation?

Number of AP courses taken, high school GPA, and SAT scores removes the gap related to parental education (p. 50)

However, it does not remove the gap related to skin color (scores are 47 points lower still)

Only equalizing the academic preparation can make the difference for African-American students. (p. 50)

(pp. 52-53) selection of institution was correlated with parental education, and with race/ethnicity

34% finish in four years; 64% in six years = degree completion as national imperative (p. 54)

Q:  While the higher-education system as a whole is failing to improve many students’ critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills at desirable levels, what are the college experiences and contexts that facilitate student learning? (p. 57)