Face with the beginning of the new semester most of my colleagues and I take time to reflect on learning and what we mean by learning at the collegiate level. This reflection is particularly important to us as we are faced with public blow back against the usefulness of collegiate education and the public push for more people to attend college. This time of reflection is often full of seemingly confusing information being offered (note my previous statement that the public wants more college education but says college education is not useful).
What most people mean by saying that college is not useful is that college is not teaching them specific job skills. People are right, if you want job skills get a job. College is not about teaching job skills. College is about learning. I continue to learn, I continue to seek knowledge. College is about teaching learning skills--how to learn, what type of things to learn--that make humans better humans. What a college education shows a potential employer is your ability to plan, to think, to complete projects. What a college education shows law schools and graduate schools is your ability to engage in learning and some basic mastery of some subject materials. None of this is directly related to job skills unless you are becoming a professional academic.
The thoughts I offer above bring me to my concern/consideration involved in my musing today. Earlier I waded through some electronic articles form Inside Higher Ed that showed unchanged average scores from 2014 to 2015 for those who took the ACT and thus are potentially entering college this fall. The average scores in 2015 for test takers in the U.S.: English 20.4, Mathematics 20.8, Reading 21.4, Science 20.9 for a composite average score of 21.0. The highest score possible on any section and as a composite is 36. The average scores are not very inspiring. We should also ask what does this mean in terms of students ability to succeed in an average collegiate course in the U.S. The ACT people have created a set of benchmarks to look at just this question.
The ACT benchmarks show what the score in English would need to be to earn a C in English Composition, the score in Mathematics to get a C in College Algebra, the score in Reading to get a C in an introduction course in a Social Science, the score in Science to get a C in Biology. The English benchmark is 18, in Mathematics and Reading 22, and in Science 23. The average ACT scores indicate to us, based on the benchmark scores, that the average U.S. test taker in 2015 is not likely to earn a C in any of the benchmark collegiate courses other than English Composition.
These numbers are not particularly disturbing. I would argue that the average test taker should not be going to college anyway. Public blow back over the seeming uselessness of a college degree is correct in the sense that most of the skills that you need to succeed in a job are learned on the job. What is disturbing about these numbers to me is that apparently K-12 is not preparing students who desire to learn beyond K-12 for that endeavor while touting sending more young people to college than ever before. Of course, that is just my two cents.
What most people mean by saying that college is not useful is that college is not teaching them specific job skills. People are right, if you want job skills get a job. College is not about teaching job skills. College is about learning. I continue to learn, I continue to seek knowledge. College is about teaching learning skills--how to learn, what type of things to learn--that make humans better humans. What a college education shows a potential employer is your ability to plan, to think, to complete projects. What a college education shows law schools and graduate schools is your ability to engage in learning and some basic mastery of some subject materials. None of this is directly related to job skills unless you are becoming a professional academic.
The thoughts I offer above bring me to my concern/consideration involved in my musing today. Earlier I waded through some electronic articles form Inside Higher Ed that showed unchanged average scores from 2014 to 2015 for those who took the ACT and thus are potentially entering college this fall. The average scores in 2015 for test takers in the U.S.: English 20.4, Mathematics 20.8, Reading 21.4, Science 20.9 for a composite average score of 21.0. The highest score possible on any section and as a composite is 36. The average scores are not very inspiring. We should also ask what does this mean in terms of students ability to succeed in an average collegiate course in the U.S. The ACT people have created a set of benchmarks to look at just this question.
The ACT benchmarks show what the score in English would need to be to earn a C in English Composition, the score in Mathematics to get a C in College Algebra, the score in Reading to get a C in an introduction course in a Social Science, the score in Science to get a C in Biology. The English benchmark is 18, in Mathematics and Reading 22, and in Science 23. The average ACT scores indicate to us, based on the benchmark scores, that the average U.S. test taker in 2015 is not likely to earn a C in any of the benchmark collegiate courses other than English Composition.
These numbers are not particularly disturbing. I would argue that the average test taker should not be going to college anyway. Public blow back over the seeming uselessness of a college degree is correct in the sense that most of the skills that you need to succeed in a job are learned on the job. What is disturbing about these numbers to me is that apparently K-12 is not preparing students who desire to learn beyond K-12 for that endeavor while touting sending more young people to college than ever before. Of course, that is just my two cents.
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