You can lead a student to knowledge, according to an old academic saying, but you can't make him or her think.
I recently wrote about the possibility of testing and certification for what I called a "college-level GED." Like the current GED test for high school equivalency, it would award certification to bright, hardworking job applicants who want to show potential employers how much they know, even though they never graduated from college.
I heard from a number of readers who supported the idea. Some were eager to take the test now, if they could. But the most thoughtful question I received went like this: What about the "critical thinking" skills that we traditionally expect campus academic life to teach and encourage?
I agree. Critical thinking is the brain's investigative reporter. It questions assumptions and requires more than the memory to pass most standardized tests.
But we do have tests for that. For example, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, launched in 2000, gives a 90-minute essay test to freshmen and seniors that aims to measure gains in critical thinking and communication skills.
However, recent studies of CLA results reveal another major problem, not so much in the testing of critical thinking as in how little critical thinking is being taught.
One new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, questions whether a large chunk of today's college students are learning much on campus that they didn't already know.
Yeah, college has become too easy. I assigned a 10-12 page paper to seniors in a capstone seminar, requirement being that they use two theoretical pieces from our quarter's reading to analyze a text of their choice. Most of them had never written a paper that long -- as SENIORS -- nor been asked to apply theory to something (forget about using the text to put pressure on the theory).
ReplyDeleteThat's one good argument for the course I teach: a required late sophomore/early junior writing-in-the-disciplines core course that, at least in most professors' iterations (we do have some freedom within broad requirements, which include minimum words written) requires a substantial final paper. My students have also heard me blather on about the idea that new primary evidence can potentially challenge the assumptions in the pre-existing scholarly/secondary lit conversation, but I can't claim that most of them entirely grasp the concept (the idea that knowledge in published, "reliable" sources is constructed is a bit of a stretch for most of them, though we're trying to get there; we really are). On the other hand, maybe if they heard it at least twice during their college careers, the chances of their getting it would be increased.
DeleteIf engineering got any harder then there would be a far greater shortage than there already is of graduates. Regarding other majors...why bother teaching critical thinking to someone who is going to be working at Starbucks anyways with their Russian literature degree?
ReplyDeleteAnd if it got any easier, we might have failing bridges, power grids, etc. One of the things I like about engineering is that it still has standards, which means that engineers are generally used to getting a variety of grades (though some of them still think they deserve to get an A in my class, because it's "only English"; sadly for them, linguistic structures can be as complex as physical ones, and I have standards, too).
DeleteAs for the Russian literature majors, the reason someone will hire them is precisely because they *do* have critical thinking skills, including the ability to understand other cultures. That's a pretty valued skill these days, in both government and business, to name two major employment sectors (and I suspect many parts of the nonprofit world would be interested, too). Given the rate at which the current wisdom changes these days, critical thinking skills -- or, to put it another way, an understanding of how the current consensus about a subject has been achieved, and what will force it to change -- are about the only thing you can take away from college that will really last. And I'm pretty sure that that's true in engineering as well as other fields. To take one example about which I know a little bit, the understanding of how best to handle stormwater runoff (and the negative consequences of handling it in ways that were considered state-of-the-art 30 years ago) has changed tremendously over the last few decades.
I'd also say something about critical thinking skills possibly being useful for weeding out potential mates with over-inflated senses of their own/their major's importance, but that might violate the rules of misery.
One of my most awesome poetry students ever was an engineering major. With no prior experience in studying literature, she just lit up the class. She really understood the "machinery" of poetry, and I am certain that this will make her a better engineer (as well as engineering clearly having made her a good critic of poetry).
DeleteMy best students, always, are double majors, humanities and science. They are going to run the world someday. They see connections others don't, and that's what will be required for white-collar jobs for this generation.
Frog and Toad, I couldn't agree more!
DeleteAn engineer can be good a poetry because engineers are great at picking anything up. A decent engineer can at least follow instruction well enough to be able to fake being good at something. But will a nerd/STEM major ever run the world? Doubtful.
DeleteUm, ever heard of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Paul Allen or Michael Dell or Burt Rutan or Jerry Yang or any of a large number of others?
DeleteThose examples just prove that nerds can get wealthy...not run the world. If anything Steve Jobs makes my point for me. He wasn't an STEM and only managed to get wealthy by leeching onto one (Wozniak). Which one had more influence? The salesman or the STEM?
DeleteTo be fair, the last two engineering graduates who became U.S. presidents were Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover. It says a lot.
DeleteAlso: isn't it pathetic for a 22-year-old undergraduate male to be flagrantly showing off his shoddy spelling, writing, and reasoning skills to a bunch of middle-aged-to-old academics, in near-real time on a Saturday night? Shouldn't you be out trying to get laid, or something?
DeleteI don't usually bother to engage with trolls, SS, but in answer to your question "who had more influence? the STEM or the leech?" I would say it was the one that ran the company for the last 14 years and made it the most profitable company in the US and the most influential tech company in the world.
DeleteAlso, as FF implies, contempt for other people's disciplines just isn't going to get you laid. Do try.
You are missing some famous engineers who have altered the face of the world. Osama bin Laden. CivE, '79. (And, to balance the craziness, Harold Camping, '42.) Yasser Arafat, CivE, '56(?), Alfred Hitchcock, Eng & Nav, ~'18.
DeleteThere are many engineers who have made impacts in non-engineering ways, just as there are visionaries from other fields who have radically altered engineering and technology. The Wright brothers did not have degrees, in fact one dropped out of high school. They were entrepreneurs who jumped on a fad (bicycles). Florence Nightingale played a huge part in the creation of modern statistics and charts and had no degrees, such things were not given to women in that time.
Stalker: Your ignorance of the role engineering and engineers have played in the world, and the role non-engineers have played in shaping technology, is a good indicator of your future. You can change that.
I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of a "college-level GED," not because I think it would work very well (especially at a time when the high school GED seems to be losing credibility), but because I'd be very intrigued to see what a bunch of "stakeholders" (profit and nonprofit employers, perhaps some reps of grad and professional schools) would come up with if they were locked in a room together for a while to try to determine what they want college graduates to be able to do. I'm pretty sure they'd want them to be able to spell and punctuate, but beyond that, I'm curious to see what they'd come up with.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone seen the Collegiate Learning Assessment, and does anybody know how (and by whom) it's scored? I'm not totally opposed to entrance and exit testing if the test is good, but many of them aren't.
"...if the test is good..." indeed. My reaction to this article was "oh goody! another standardized test! Because those work SO well!"
DeleteI wouldn't mind a good entrance & exit test that was anonymous and used strictly for statistical purposes; that would be useful information. But you know that isn't what would happen. Students would wind up with their score on one test tattooed on their foreheads as a summary of their total worth, just like all of the other standardized tests that were supposed to be used strictly for statistical purposes. No.
And if the test is anonymous and used solely for statistical purposes, it will be like pulling teeth to get them to show up for it, and impossible to get them to do their best work. But I don't like the "reduce them to a number" approach either. It's a Catch-22.
DeleteA while back, I wrote reading comprehension questions for a major graduate admissions test (one whose takers would eventually be dealing with life and death situations, so, yes, they really did need to know how to read complex material). It was multiple choice, but I was reasonably satisfied with the sorts of things it sought to measure (and reasonably well convinced that it would, in fact, measure those things): finding the main point of a passage, determining whether an assertion was supported by evidence, recognizing that another author might be quoted/cited for more than one reason (as support, in order to apply a theory, to refute, etc.), inferring meaning from context. I wouldn't mind my students' progress being measured by such a test, and I suspect that something similar could be constructed for the sort of quantitative reasoning used in the social sciences, and for core skills in other fields as well. In some ways, I'd rather see that sort of testing than a badly-designed (and, especially, badly-graded) essay exam. My sense is that the essays written for APs and IBs are reasonably well graded (though I've heard of some exceptions, or at least some stories that suggest that scores for different cohorts/scoring sessions might not be entirely comparable), but that's an expensive process -- far more expensive than colleges are going to be willing to pay for on a regular basis. I really, really don't want the success of my work judged by a bunch of barely-graduated B.A.s (or coked-up grad students), as I gather happened in some of the NCLB testing.
"I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of a 'college-level GED,'...."
ReplyDeleteI thought that was what an Associate's Degree was, or at least proof that you went to community college.
At the risk of having the Strel squad show up and take me to An Undisclosed Location, I call bullshit on this one. The core at my college is exactly the same as State U down the road and Really Big, Prestigious R1 a little bit farther away. Students who graduate with an associate's degree from my college and transfer do better in GPA and bachelor's graduation rates than native students who did their first two years at those institutions. Our technical programs are in huge demand. The ones which lead to associate's degrees require college-level reading, writing, and math skills. Some of them have waiting lists of two years, and many of them have employment rates of 90%+ for their graduates with a couple at 100%. Nobody tests into an associate's degree, at least not at an accredited CC.
DeleteI've heard "engineers are great at picking anything up" many times before, usually before the engineer speaking says something about my discipline that shows he's completely clueless about anything other than engineering.
ReplyDeleteEngineers are, with stunning regularity, my weakest students. Some are bright and motivated; others lack "big picture" abilities and executive thinking skills.
DeleteNot to mention the fact that there is a real pecking order in the engineering field. Mechanical and chemical engineers are considered to be the bright ones; electrical and civil bring up the rear.
"tudents who graduate with an associate's degree from my college and transfer do better in GPA and bachelor's graduation rates than native students who did their first two years at those institutions."
ReplyDeleteYES -- third- and fourth-year students who have transfered from CCs generally do better at my big R1 too. This is because (surprise!) at CCs they have often had smaller, more writing-intensive classes taught by those dedicated to teaching, as opposed to having had big lecture classes with TA discussion sections.
Community college teachers rock.