Ouch. According to a new study, college students are spending four (or more) years and thousands of dollars on higher education, but they’re not actually learning anything.
(photo credit: peanutian)
Here’s the short story:
Students are slacking off, colleges are more focused on enrolling and keeping new students than they are on making sure each student gets a quality education, and professors are having trouble keeping up with their increasingly large class sizes as more and more people attend college.
Here are the fun facts:
- 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during the first two years of college.
- 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” over four years of college.
- Students who study by themselves for more hours each week gain more knowledge — while those who spend more time studying in peer groups see diminishing gains.
- Students whose classes reflect high expectations (more than 40 pages of reading a week and more than 20 pages of writing a semester) gained more than other students.
- Students who spend more time in fraternities and sororities show smaller gains than other students.
Read the whole story here.