A colleague of mine sent me a link to this New York Times Magazine article this morning: “The College Calculation,” by David Leonhardt discusses a number of different studies as to whether or not a college degree is really worth it. I have to say that the opening paragraph kind of annoyed me:
The most subversive question about higher education has always been whether the college makes the student or the student makes the college. Sure, Harvard graduates make more money than graduates of just about any other college. And most community-college students will end up making far less than graduates of flagship state universities. But of course these students didn’t enter college with the same preparation and skills. Colleges don’t help to clear up the situation either, because they do so little to measure what students learn between freshman and senior years. So doubt lurks: how much does a college education — the actual teaching and learning that happens on campus — really matter?
Colleges don’t help to clear up the situation either, because they do so little to measure what students learn between freshman and senior years. Oh, really?! All this program review, stuff like NCATE, AQUIP, accreditation enterprises, and our own internal sorts of reviews? Really?
But beyond that first paragraph, I think Leonhardt does a good job of outlining some of the various theories/studies out there, though one thing that I think is missing is that the value of a college education is (hopefully) more than just money.
Hi Steve,
At risk of type-casting myself as the EMUTalk reader who most often defends the news media’s coverage of higher education, I must say that I find Leonhardt’s piece very reasonable. It reflects a broad debate over what families get from investing in higher ed, and also increasingly sophisticated calculations about what kind of higher ed experience a family should invest in.
And you ask good questions about whether universities really measure what our students learn. NCATE, AQIP, accreditation agencies — few of them, I think, really require measurements of what’s learned over the whole course of a college career. Few of them apply to a whole university; and many general education programs, like the one closest to our home, is designed and run for years without any comprehensive measure or assessment of what learning is achieved as a result of the program.
Assessment of learning is very complex. Pressure to do such assessments are mounting every year, and will not go away. The pressure will get stronger, and the demand for “objective” data will mount. Leonhardt is the NYTimes writer who singled EMU out for our pathetically low graduation rate. He’s good reporter: substandard performance by a public institution is newsworthy. Even if unwelcome and unpleasant.
We should push for assessments that are real and comprehensive, and that are defined by educators with the goal of improving learning – rather than punishing universities. Employers and grad school professors across the land bemoan the lack of academic and analytical skills that so many college graduates demonstrate. That fact, plus the higher education system’s failure to graduate even 50% of its freshman class within 6 years, indicates that there is too little learning being done in college.
Derek Bok’s great book OUR UNDERACHIEVING COLLEGES (Princeton, 2006) makes this case in great detail; and Bok is not knee jerk anti-intellectual foe of the life of the mind. It’s a great book.
Oh, I agree with you Mark– other than that first paragraph, I think it’s a very good article too. I think I’m going to show it to my first year comp students on Tuesday.
Still, I think the problem I have with these “what are students learning?” kinds of studies is it’s really REALLY hard to measure. I mean, I can tell you what I teach and I can tell you my goals with various assignments and activities, but that doesn’t mean I can tell you what students actually learned.
Can’t tell us what students actually learned? Isn’t that what grades are for?
Good Lord, no! Grades are tied to what students do in a class, not necessarily what they learn. I’ve had plenty of students who didn’t get a very good grade for all kinds of different reasons but who told me that the learned a lot. Conversely, I’ve had students who ended up with a good grade in the class but who said they didn’t learn much, often because they came into the class knowing a lot already.
Dear Skeptical Parent,
You ask a good and fair question, but as sitedad’s reply indicates, it’s not so simple. Maybe you got an A because you already knew everything we covered in class, and learned nothing new. If so, a waste of time. Or maybe you’re good at BS-ing on exams, and learn material short term but retain nothing long term. Assessing what anybody learns is exceedingly complex; doing so for thousands of students at a school, all the more so. As i understand this field, and I do so not well at all, pretests and posttests, after an experience that is meant to be learning, is a useful method for assessing what’s been learned – but that is cumbersome and expensive to implement.
Grades are, i think, a fairly good guide to what a given student demonstrated in a given course in reference to the criteria for grading that is used in that course. But the Derek Bok argument, which I agree with, is that the amount of learning that takes place across the spectrum of higher ed, is less than it should be for the sums and efforts invested.
I tell my students that grades are a measure of your ability to show up at a certain time and place in the space-time continuum, not commit any major crimes while in class, perform inane tasks for a dysfunctional power figure, and survive X number of years in a system of intellectual and psychological terrorism called “American education*.”
*”..rife with mediocrity yet riddles with excellence…”
you’re funny, George, but if your post is serious, I’d respectfully suggest your standards are too low. Grades can be a reasonably good approximation of learning and/or achievement, both in a given class and over the course of one’s education.