The authors of a new book about undergraduate education assert,

Growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent.

Unsurprisingly, the book, Academically Adrift, has been drawing attention since it was released on Tuesday. It is currently at #22 on Amazon’s sales rankings and is not owned by most major public libraries. An excerpt  appeared earlier this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education under the headline, Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? It’s being picked up by news sources

Study: One-Third of Students Don’t Learn Much in College CBS MoneyWatch.com

The Choice: How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? New York Times (blog)

Study: Students slog through college, but don’t gain much critical thinking, Seattle Times

The value of college, The Economist (blog)

Guest post: ‘Academically Adrift,’ indeed, Washington Post (blog)

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses Richard Arum, Josipa Roksa Retail Price: $25.00 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: University Of Chicago Press – (2011-01-15) ISBN / EAN: 0226028569 / 9780226028569

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 5:33 pm and is filed under 2011/12 - Winter/Spring, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.