April 7, 2011

• Has College Really Changed?

  From an article I'm reading:
  "The trouble is, advance information about the economy is often wrong; the curriculum can barely keep up with technological changes, and faculty members are generally isolated from the job market. But it is hard for a young person to understand that higher-order thinking skills—those most needed in a turbulent job market—can come from courses that are not obviously job-related: Shakespeare can be more useful, in the long term, than a course about last year's software. Students may be receptive to that possibility—and to the chance of studying something that truly interests them—but uncertainties about the future have ushered in an era of grim pragmatism and short-term planning."
  Now, I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare, but I like the point ... I need to get this across to my students in a few classes, somehow.

  This was part of a comment that came after the article:
  "However, due to expanded enrollments and increased hype about higher education being a "necessity", those strong students are barely noticed above the noise being made by the increasing proportion of students who simply don't know why they're here and what they should be getting out of their courses. Most of my office hours today are taken up with "student management issues". I know the names and backgrounds of dozens of failing students due to the endless hours."

  From another comment, and this backs up some of my Master's Thesis work... the part in purple is what my research was REALLY trying to get at (how complex is student writing online?):
  "recent research (I'm think of Lunsford & Lunsford's "Mistakes Are a Fact of Life") shows that students are not confusing texting with academic writing, nor are they writing shorter—but in fact they're writing longer papers than they did 25 years ago, and with more sources. This has created new problems, but not necessarily more extreme versions of what we've come to expect over decades of collective experience. That said, the complexity of thinking seems to need more research, because I expect this is a more insidious issue than being able (or not) to fill 4-5 double-spaced pages."

  • 5:39 pm
  • 1 Comment