The College Fix

A new book, We’re Losing Our Minds, argues that today’s students aren’t gaining any “higher” learning in American universities. The book draws many of the same conclusions as Academically Adrift, a study from last year that found significant proportions of students were no smarter after two and four years of college.

The authors of We’re Losing Our Minds were interviewed by Inside Higher Ed:

There’s no question that high costs are a problem. But low value is a bigger problem. No matter what the cost is, higher education is overpriced if it fails to deliver on its most basic promise: learning. Value is low when, as the research shows, too many of our college graduates are not prepared to think critically and creatively, speak and write clearly, solve problems, comprehend complex issues, accept responsibility and accountability, take the perspective of others, or meet the expectations of employers.

Thinking of undergraduate degrees as commodities — tickets to a job — has led students, parents, institutions of higher education, governing boards, and state and federal officials to focus on efficiency, rather than efficacy. Attempts to improve efficiency — to produce more graduates with more degrees at lower cost — have created misguided policy “fixes” and supported demands for a particular kind of accountability that can be measured by simplistic indicators like cost and retention.

We are facing a national crisis in higher learning, or, rather, in the lack thereof. Improving efficiency and lowering costs are just not enough; we need to improve value. And we can only improve value by increasing the quality and quantity of learning in college. We wrote our book to help catalyze a national discussion on this issue — and with the hope that the academy will rise to the occasion and avoid the imposition of “solutions” from outside higher education.

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