However this article is revealing, it is not surprising at all.
Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
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Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#92Every time a college sucks article gets published I think the same things: Look at the college enrollment rates since the 1960's. Look at the tuition rates since the 1960's Look at the distribution of majors since the 1960's Then precede to look at the labor market. It all becomes very clear. There's millions of great young people roaming the halls of colleges who are not engaged in higher learning. Great young peopl…
I went to college directly out of high school and wasted my parents money. It felt impossible to break this to my family that I was leaving school.
After leaving school, I worked for ~4-5 years before I started taking classes again. After landing my first internship as a developer, I've been working as a developer and completing a CS degree f/t ever since. My parents were sold a lie, but I was a fool to buy into it.
The punchline being that I don't even need the degree to work as a developer. However, the subject matter is enjoyable and it's better to leave some doors open for future options (masters, phd or whatever).
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#93The article is about college but what about the previous 12 years of school. Why don't students learn critical thinking during those years. 12 years of school and students lack learning skills, critical thinking skills and what burns me most high school graduates don't have a marketable skill they can use to get a job if they have to start working.
Last year's election focus on some very irrelevant subjects yet our graduates aren't ready for the world they have to face. School reform should be a hot subject yet it's not at the top of the list. Start up jockeys take note the US school system is ready for disruption. I hope it happens soon.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#94Many comments here are about the value of higher ed generally and are fascinating to read, but I'm interested in critical reasoning particularly, and this study doesn't surprise me. (1) Critical reasoning is rarely taught directly, especially to students who don't major in or take a philosophy course. (2) Even when critical reasoning is taught directly, it's poorly taught. Compare an introductory text on critical rea…
I agree with 1-3, but about 4 - I think that's mostly a stereotype about STEM, not the real thing. First, most STEM education doesn't feature that much of formal logic, if any at all. Secondly, actual experience in STEM is probably the best way to internalize that reality is fuzzy and messy (and a good education will teach you that math has tools for handling exactly that, known as probability theory).
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#95I'm not sure this is a reasonable expectation of college. Critical thinking is hard to teach. I don't know if it's possible to scale it beyond the few teachers who are good at it.
Measuring critical thinking is hard, too. The universities who criticized the test used here are probably not wrong, even if their motive is only to save face. It's only 90 minutes, which is a time limit more suited for quick sophistry than looking at some new evidence and coming up with a solid argument from it.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Eighteen was middle-aged That is possibly misleading. By year 1500 the life expectancy of a nobleman in England who had reached age 20 was about 70--about the world average in 2017. Infant Mortality rates were high back then, skewing averages, and during the Middle Ages they had the Bubonic Plague, skewing it even more...
Perhaps he was referring more to amount of responsibility at age 18 rather than % of lifespan?
Sure. It's possibly a misleading statement and that's all I said.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck finding a job without a college degree.
Could always work for me. I tell applicants to leave off their education credentials and to show me their previous work history and projects. Hired a dropout who ended up producing sports science research that probably could have netted him a Ph.D. We're out there hiring.
> Hired a dropout who ended up producing sports science research that probably could have netted him a Ph.D.
Is there any way he could turn that into actual Ph.D.? I ask out of curiosity, because many people do things in their professional lives that are equivalent of achievements in academic work, and I wonder if there's a way to turn former into the latter.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#98Just yesterday there was a thread [1] on the rising costs of college and if it is worth it. The general consensus on that link seemed to be that most can no longer afford learning for the sake of learning.
Contrast that with this thread, where many appear to be taking the stance that college education, particularly one of breadth, is a crucial part of their education. Some posters have discussed the benefits of small liberal arts colleges.
As far as I can see, the anecdotes from many here about education is a big part of why the cost has been able to rise so much - it can give a life-changing value for some. HN is a community of programmers, mostly. Ask many about a CS degree, and they won't tell you that the programming languages they learned in college are what makes them successful, but the way they learned to teach themselves as needed on topics in CS. Give a man a fish, yada yada yada. The same really goes for critical thinking and education in general. It's the reason a few in the thread yesterday talked about their loans being worth it.
The hard part is getting a student to focus on learning to think/learn, to borrow from a post by @closure in this thread. There seems to be a lot of support behind pushing for critical thinking and this type of learning in high school, which I strongly agree with. I was lucky enough to get it in high school, and early at that. It made an absolutely huge difference in my approach to education.
The question then arises: is it the responsibility of a college to teach a high-level of critical thinking, or should you enter with it? I don't have the answer, but I'm curious as to what people think.
I go to (chose) a college that is very much pre-professional at the core, but it offers all of the resources I need for a full and fulfilling education. I have always seen college as a resource, but you have to know how to use it to get the most out of it. The problem is that most college freshman, and many college seniors, don't know how to do this, and critical thinking is probably a big piece of that.
It's a bit of a circular problem - you need critical thinking skills to get the most out of college, but may need to also learn critical thinking at college. If we ever actually get to a point where we can do a proper overhaul of the education system as a whole, I think properly defining and executing these roles should be a key focus.
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PS: This is just a collection of thoughts/insights, not really a stance or an argument. Not sure what to make of all of this yet as a full picture.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Paying for the party" is amusing. "Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities" covers much the same material. The importance of drinking didn't happen by accident. The alcohol industry promoted it heavily.[1] Two out of five students in the colleges studied are now binge drinkers. I got critical thinking early because I was brought up by a lawyer. There were always briefs around the house, and I could read the briefs fo…
I'd never thought of legal briefings as good educational material, but I think you are right that doing so would help a person understand how to even approach an issue. Maybe even following up with the court's decision and (in the case of SCOTUS) dissents. On a philosophical level, Leonard Peikoff talks about this issue in his essay "The American School: Why Johnny Can't Think" [1]: "An education that trains a child’…
The history of law school is a perfect example of developing critical thinking in students, and its pitfalls. Learning to be a lawyer didn't used to be about critical thinking. Up until the late 1800s, lawyers went to school and learned "the law", e.g., what was allowed and what wasn't. But the problem was that the law constantly changed, and what a lawyer learned in school could easily become outdated and wrong.
Around that time, there was a movement (based at Harvard) to change legal education. Rather than learning "the law", law students learned how to develop arguments. They did this by reading the final judicial written opinions, which evaluated both sides of the argument, rather than reading far more concise summarizations of the law. This caused a huge backlash and there was even a lawschool student walk-out when it was first implemented. However, the method caught on at Harvard and quickly spread to the rest of the country, and is now standard fare at every law school. A funny result of this method is that many law students don't remember how important cases turns out, but they are far more likely to remember the arguments that each side made. (It carries through to lawyering to this day: a lawyers job is not to "win" the case, but to craft the best argument for winning the case.)
The newer type of teaching is excellent for developing critical thinking skills, finding logic flaws, and building an argument. That said, having gone through law school, there is far too much of developing these basic building blocks, law students don't need 3 years of it, and the result is that many young lawyers don't know the basic mechanics of law (although they do know the principles). Ask a recent grad how to file a lawsuit, or defend against one, and they will be at a complete loss.
My point is that while building basic critical thinking skills are extremely important for any school, there is a point when it can swing too far in one direction, and law schools are a perfect example of that.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#100The mandatory Jordan Peterson link: "Why You Go To College" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANtPUg37f04
I mostly agreed with what he was saying until he made that non-sequitur about "postmodern neo-Marxism." Universities are just giving the students what they want: a piece of paper that allows access to the job market. Most modern university students do not appear to want an education and neo-Marxism has nothing to do with that shift.
Jordan Petersen is the new hotness in neoreactionary circles. Makes all the proto-fascism easy to digest if you pretend to be an intellectual.