The Myth of the Knowledge Economy
Go to college, learn a lot of stuff, qualify for a good job when you graduate. Right? Maybe not.
Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum's recently published Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.. Their study turned up some rather disturbing facts.
Only 25 percent of all Americans go to college, and only 16 percent of those actually try to learn anything. Welcome a nation of helots
Among the authors' findings: 32 percent of the students who they followed in an average semester did not take any courses that assigned more than 40 pages of reading per week. Half did not take any courses in which more than 20 pages of writing were assigned throughout the entire term. Furthermore, 35 percent of the students sampled spent five hours or less a week studying alone. Typical students spent about 16 percent of their time on academic pursuits, and were "academically engaged," write the authors, less than 30 hours a week. After two years in college, 45 percent of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36 percent showed little change. And the students who did show improvement only logged very modest gains. Students spent 50 percent less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.
http://www.nationofchange.org/myth-knowledge-economy-1332512349
