{"id":2283,"date":"2011-01-18T12:37:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T19:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2011-01-19T22:43:24","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T05:43:24","slug":"academically-adrift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2283","title":{"rendered":"‘Academically Adrift’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is probably no surprise to a lot of us in higher education that “45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

(Lest I be accused of America-bashing, in talking with international students, I got an even worse impression of universities in some other countries, e.g. Italy and France.)<\/p>\n

Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An awful lot of students in university classrooms simply should not be there. They are not prepared\u2014academically, psychologically, or both.<\/p>\n

(“Psychologically unprepared” would have applied to me as a freshman too. I struggled along and “woke up” midway through my second year.)<\/p>\n

These students are there because they are told to “get a college degree,” whereupon they will be magic somehow.<\/p>\n

Now we hear more and more about a higher education bubble<\/a> on the point of bursting, just like the real estate market.<\/p>\n

Get a degree, have thousands of dollars in student-loan debt, and work at Starbucks. It’s not a viable model of higher education if the cost keeps rising but the benefits of paying them do not seem to be there.<\/p>\n

If this realization reaches a tipping point, it won’t be good for academic employment for us professors.<\/p>\n

The fiscal conservative in me says, “Go ahead, shut down a few state schools. All but about three states are running budget deficits and need to save money.”<\/p>\n

And then I wonder if any of my academic friends would lose jobs or be unable to find jobs if that happened. But it might happen anyway.<\/p>\n

Erin O’Connor comments too and has a more clever headline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And Vanity Fair<\/em> delivers the snark<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is probably no surprise to a lot of us in higher education that “45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.” (Lest I be accused of America-bashing, in talking with international students, I got an even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-AP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=79","url_meta":{"origin":2283,"position":0},"title":"Another upcoming cinematic success for\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 8, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Another upcoming cinematic success for Philip K. Dick He is, of course, dead. And he never made a whole lot of money. But now Dick is a \"brand image,\" says his agent, Russell Galen in this story from Wired, \"The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick.\" \"It may be for\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1154,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1154","url_meta":{"origin":2283,"position":1},"title":"Patheos’ Pagan Gateway","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have had the privilege of helping to create the \"Pagan gateway\" on Patheos.com, a new interfaith religious portal site designed to help people find \" credible, comprehensive, easily accessible information on religion and spirituality.\"Founders Leo and Cathie Brunnick are trying to create a site that is comprehensive, academically sound,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1286,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1286","url_meta":{"origin":2283,"position":2},"title":"Dark of the Moon","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I tend to get into some bad places psychologically when it's the dark of the Moon and work is not going well. \"No one respects me, no one pays any attention to what I say\"\u2014that sort of thing.The best cure is to take a dog (who may or may not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dogs\"","block_context":{"text":"dogs","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dogs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":684,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=684","url_meta":{"origin":2283,"position":3},"title":"'Witch school' OpensWhat struck me\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"'Witch school' OpensWhat struck me most about this article on Ed Hubbard's Witch School was not the culture-war angle (\"Residents Petitioned and Prayed to Keep It Away\"), but the sort-of positive response from Kirk White of Cherry Hill Seminary at the end.One also could make comparisons with the Frosts' School\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":329,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=329","url_meta":{"origin":2283,"position":4},"title":"Secret Thrills of Teaching Rhetoric\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Secret Thrills of Teaching Rhetoric I teach a class each semester on advanced composition and rhetoric, using this book as one of the texts. The students are mostly education majors who must take the course as their last exposure to a writing class before they are turned loose on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1515,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1515","url_meta":{"origin":2283,"position":5},"title":"Survey on Pagan Coming-of-Age Rituals","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Sociologist Gina Oboler has done good research in the Pagan community before\u2014I used some of her work on Pagans and environmentalism in Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Now she is looking at coming-of-age rituals, and if you can offer some experience-based responses, please fill\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2288,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions\/2288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}