find out. they study data from a group of more than 2,000 students enrolled in four-year colleges who have been tracked over a period of years. the book that resulted from this research was called academically adrift. b among its many findings, 45% of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over the first two years of college. close to 40 percent didn t learn anything at all over four years. how do students learn so little? many of them never study period of 35% of students reported spending no more than five hours a week and academic preparation. overall, the study found a 50% decline in the number of hours students spend studying compared to several decades ago. the average full-time college student now spends only 2.76 hours a day on all education related activities, going to class, studying, all of it. more than twice as much time shopping, eating, and partying.
with critical thinking skills, most colleges today would get an f. we are joined by nyu professor and co-author of academically adrift richard aren. good morning. good morning. we don t find many kids like that today getting those kinds of grades. today, we would give them b s. in fact, you have suggested that maybe we need to give kids a ged test just to see what they know because some of the kids who didn t go to college are smarter than the kids who do. yeah, that proposal by clarence page is interesting and provocative. i do think that we need to move from just giving people paper degrees to assessing what they learn and seeing whether or not they can actually perform these basic competencies. if they re not learning critical thinking in college, what are they doing? well, in our study, we followed several thousand students. we found a third of them spending less than an hour a day
room got white as a sheet and began to wobble in her chair. after class i asked her what was wrong. and she said that in high school she had never written anything longer than three paragraphs and she was now an english major. this was 1975. then i thought our educational system had hit the basement. from a new study comes an indication that that was the golden era, and the girl across the room from me in goldwin smith hall now be considered today a genius. the study is in a book called academically adrift. they studied 2,300 undergrads at two dozen universities. during the first two years of college, 45% of students, quote, demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and written communications. 36% show that same lack of improvement upon graduation. but perhaps students would learn more if professors asked more of them. half of the students surveyed said they had not taken a single course that required more than
wrong. and she said that in high school she had never written anything longer than three paragraphs and she was now an english major. this was 1975. then i thought our educational system had hit the basement. from a new study comes an indication that that was the golden era, and the girl across the room from me in goldwin smith hall now be considered today a genius. the study is in a book called academically adrift. they studied 2,300 undergrads at two dozen universities. during the first two years of college, 45% of students, quote, demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and written communications. 36% show that same lack of improvement upon graduation. but perhaps students would learn more if professors asked more of them. half of the students surveyed said they had not taken a single course that required more than 20 pages of writing during the
as i thought, you want them thursday? a girl across from me in the room got white as a sheet and began to wobble in her chair. after class i asked her what was wrong. and she said that in high school she had never written anything longer than three paragraphs and she was now an english major. this was 1975. then i thought our educational system had hit the basement. from a new study comes an indication that that was the golden era, and the girl across the room from me in goldwin smith hall now be considered today a genius. the study is in a book called academically adrift. they studied 2,300 undergrads at two dozen universities. during the first two years of college, 45% of students, quote, demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning and written communications. 36% show that same lack of improvement upon graduation. but perhaps students would learn