Fox News reports on a study conducted by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy and sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The researchers asked some 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and seniors multiple-choice questions about America’s history, government, foreign relations and economy. Some of their findings:
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On average, seniors scored just 1.5 percent better than freshmen did. And had the survey been graded as a test, seniors would have failed; they averaged 53.2 percent.
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Students at relatively inexpensive colleges often learn more, on average, than their counterparts at expensive colleges.
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Students at many supposedly top-flight schools seem to lose knowledge while on campus. At Berkeley (49th on the list) seniors scored 5.6 percent worse than freshmen, and at Johns Hopkins (dead last) they were 7.3 percent worse.
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Overall, of 50 schools surveyed, students regressed at 16 of them.
Could the universities be spending too much time celebrating diversity and promoting multiculturalism?
Could you explain to me how you found the link between the study, about freshmen and seniors and how much they know, and celebrating diversity and promoting multiculturalism? :p Seriously, I see no connection at all. I know you’ve written a previous blog post about ‘diversity and multiculturalism’, and I know you’re not an advocate of either, but I’m really failing to see the link between them and this study.
julenka: I know of no link. That’s why I stated it as a question. Since the diversity and multiculturalism thing was fresh on my mind and since something caused the poor performance I just raised the question.
Oh, ok. That’s fair enough.
I think this study is a bit flawed, in that it’s taking a seperate group of freshmen and seperate group of seniors. It would be cool if they could track this group of freshmen that they surveyed, to see how they do in three years time [or whatever the length is for you guys, between being a freshman and a senior]. As it stands now, it could just be that the last three [?] years have prompted University students to learn more about American history, government, foreign relations and economy.
I wonder how much external factors have to do with it, too? For example, the reelection of Bush, the rise in prominence of shows like The Daily Show, or the emergence of ‘mainstream’ blogs like Daily Kos, for example. All of these things could affect these results.
Or it could just be the simple fact that students need to spend more time studying when they’re seniors, so may simply not have the time to keep themselves updated on news in politics. I’m curious as to how up-to-date the questions were.
But yah, overall, I think it’d take quite a lot of convincing to make me believe that any one reason is the cause for this regression.
julenka: Good point on retesting the freshmen when they become seniors.
I think the study was about what the students are learning in high school and college from instruction on America’s history, government, foreign relations and economy, as well as what they hear or read on the news.
I agree that it’s not likely that the students’ performance is due to any one reason.
It is interesting, though. I kinda wish they had a more detailed study, to provide some insight into why students are getting ‘dumber’.
Also, I wonder what a breakup between courses would show. As in, my friends and I are getting smarter as we pass the years at Uni, but we’re mostly studying politics/media type courses, which kinda require us to keep a finger on the pulse of history/economics/current events/politics/etc. But I wonder how that compares to medical students, for example, or engineers, business or commerce students, etc. That would be quite interesting.
I’m gonna see if I can hunt down the original study, to see what sorts of things they tracked.
Thanks for the heads up on this, anyway.