Introduction
People hold onto the believe that education is the key to success. As such many learning institutions have mushroomed with an aim of quenching the society’s thirst for education. Over the years parents, students and the entire society has been craving to acquire high education with an aim that it will help them live the kind of life they desire. They have flocked into higher learning institutions hoping to acquire quality education. Societies have always believed that the institutions offer quality and effective educational skills. However, Roksa and Arum did a research in higher education and the findings flabbergasted many that they even find it hard to believe. Considering the performance of students in school and graduates in the work place, the findings apparently attest to be true.
The research found that undergraduates do not learn anything in the colleges and especially in the first two years. Though the number of students in colleges is increasingly growing, a large proportion of the students do not gain in complex reasoning, written communication and critical thinking. Critical thinking is an aspect that should be developed early in life and not in during high learning. The research blames the lack of critical thinking among many students on the administrators of higher education. This should not be so as critical thinking is a practice that should have developed within the student during their early life in school. Aksum generalizes the findings and wants people to believe on it yet they just used a mere sample. He may have picked the data from colleges that were low in performance or admitted students had had comparatively registered a low performance in high school. The findings should therefore not be used to describe the US College students as academically drift.
It is true that most college students lack a lot when it comes to written communication as well as oral communication. However, this should not be blamed entirely on colleges since the students have a large part to play in this. Most aspects of communication can be learnt by individual efforts rather than waiting for the instructors directions. Communication skills are very essential and colleges should ensure that each and every student acquires its basic skills early enough so that their progress in college becomes easy and meaningful. Colleges should allocate more time the subject of communication which apparently the performance in the other subjects depend upon.
The ability of a student to learn differs. They also progress at different rates. Many of the freshmen did not seem to gain anything in the few years in college. It may have been due to the excitement of joining higher institutions of learning that they even forget to devote most of their time to class work. The collegiate learning assessment (CLA) measures aggregate collegiate skills that aim to capture critical thinking, writing and complex reasoning. It may therefore not be an effective method of accessing the college students. A system that tracks student’s progress from entry to completion should be developed so that a more realistic conclusion can be drawn from its findings.
The iron triangle of higher education stresses on the cost, access and quality. It may not be possible for colleges to offer the quality education that is being advocated for at a cost that most people will be able to bear while at the same time making it accessible to many Americans. It may be due to the high cost of running the colleges that many of them fail to offer quality education that can transform the lives of Americans. The government should allow higher institutions of learning to demand high fees from students. This will reduce its accessibility but those who will be in a position to access will actually have acquired quality education. Apparently the government can come in and engage in a cost sharing plan with the colleges for the benefit of the people. That is spending for the people and it is in no way a waste of resources.
Arum says that many students go through higher education with little asked of them in terms of rigor, few gains on the objective of learning and little effort applied to their studies. The research therefore tries to suggest that colleges do not add any value to students. However, it should be noted that not all aspects of students were measured by the research. For instance students may have acquired other useful social aspects that the research overlooked. People should therefore attend higher learning institutions because they have the capacity to change their lives to the better in so many aspects.
Instead of blaming college administrators and presidents for the failure of colleges, the society should be ready to devote more resources and efforts towards improving the quality of higher education. They should be ready to cough some extra money for tuition programs. Apart from this, society should also instill a lifelong love of learning, ability to assume responsibilities, ability to think critically and also communicate effectively. This will go a long way in transforming the higher education and reduce the academic drift that is being witnessed in the contemporary generation.
Reference
Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
