In the second edition of my 100 reasons to go to college, I
am offering another rebuttal post of sorts. In this post, I am exploring the
reasoning offered in the 100
Reasons Not to go to College blog, where the author cites various reasons
why colleges can’t really teach you how to think.
As always, I want to offer an olive branch before I even
begin my rebuttal: I do not think the author of this post is necessarily
entirely wrong. There is no doubt that
many professors, myself included, have a habit of not necessarily teaching
critical thinking in a direct manner, but instead teach students how we ourselves think and
attack problems, about areas of interest, and our ideas for research and fixing said
problems. I, as I am assuming others
do, also try to teach my students how to interpret news, opinion pieces, and
scholarly articles in a way that is beyond looking at the superficial read and
regurgitate level, more so by trying to push my students to connect ideas both
from their own frame of reference and also between various pieces that they are reading.
In short, both myself and the author of the post linked
above are “right”, just in different ways.
Firstly, the author
notes an NYU study, which Richard Arum ultimately used to write the seminal
book, Academically Adrift, (you can
get a good idea about that book/article by reading about
the study written about in this article) which found that students did not
improve upon their critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills as
one would expect of a college graduate.
While I know this book has been somewhat controversial since its
publication, since the findings are so reliant on the CLA test, I also have
found it interesting in that also helps to make the inverse argument of
what the blog post author was aiming to make. For example, let’s review this quote
below:
Forty-five percent of
students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning
or writing skills during the first two years of college, according to the
study. After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called
"higher order" thinking skills.
In the above quote, we see that 55% of students are going to
make some form of improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning and/or
writing skills during their first few years in college, and that roughly two
thirds of college students will make improvements as they continue through
college. What does this point too? Simple,
as you spend more time in university, you’ll continue to improve upon critical
thinking, writing, and reasoning skills.
Another area the blog post author explores is the issue of
time. How can students improve their thinking skills if they are only going
through the motions to get a good grade, get a degree, and go on to the
workforce? Ultimately, I think this moves the goalposts away from skill
development, towards a motivation for one’s education. However, even then, a study by Lin and
McKeachie found that students who
are both intrinsically motivated and extrinsically motivated to succeed in a
course were more likely to get a higher grade and to actually learn the content
found within the course of study (1999).
The author closes with an analogy that one is more likely to
improve upon thinking skills through solving puzzles or crosswords. While I
certainly understand that this was offered for comedic purposes, I do feel the post glosses
over the many ways one will learn to assess ideas and to think deeply about
what they are learning.
By going to college you will most likely do all of the
following found below:
- Work with experts in your field of study (i.e. your professors).
- Read, dissect, and discuss seminal works in your field of study. By building this foundation, you will be able to shape your ideas through developing a framework grounded in a deeper theoretical (and hopefully practical implications of said theory) understanding of your field.
- Learn how to assess bias of the authors you are reading.
- Connect theory to practice and connect theories to other theories.
- Learn for the background of your peers and their life experiences.
- Hopefully have your ideas scrutinized by others, so that you can reformulate your thinking and learn how to address weak spots in your overall knowledge of your field.
Consequently, I’ll close this post by noting that I believe
that colleges teach you various ways of thinking. These include being able to
dissect ideas, but also being able to understand ideas from a variety of
perspectives, to understand what makes for a strong argument, and also to
better judge the veracity of the argument of others. These are invaluable
skills that one will need to succeed in life, regardless of the profession they
choose to enter.