Philosoraptor

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Study Concludes Students Learn Little In College

(h/t J. Cartensis)

Anonymous said...: I get the opposite out of that:
55% of students do learn useful skills in college, and 66% are required to write 20+ page reports.

I certainly learned some valuable things in college that I would not have discovered otherwise. (E.g., training in statistical mechanics and chemistry has proven valuable in a carreer in software engineering.)

-mac; 9:34 PM
Winston Smith said...: LOL--totally right, mac... Why didn't I notice that?

Yeah, well, it's hard to go wrong with math and science...it's mostly everybody else I worry about...; 9:52 PM
lovable liberal said...: There's some rotten-cherry-picking going on in the AP report. After four years, 64% have made significant gains. That's bad, but it's not as bad as the story wants us to think.

It does suggest that more college attendance may not be a magic bullet. (Of course, it would be great if policy-makers realized that there are no magic bullets.); 2:16 PM
Winston Smith said...: Agreed...in my defense, I intentionally said that the study concluded that there was little learning, explicitly not endorsing or rejecting the conclusion. A friend sent me the whole report. But 45% showing no significant improvement is pretty damn bad, no matter what the rest of the data looks like...or so I assert.; 2:41 PM