Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills • Hacker News Board

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#191

Post by sevensor » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #2

I've taught college. This study is wildly unsurprising. I've written about this in various places (e.g. https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... ), but most colleges have evolved majors and paths that are designed to move students through the system, collect their tuition money, and graduate them. In re-reading the previous sentence, I think I sound opposed to this. I am a little bit, maybe, bu…

Thanks for linking to your blog post, that was a worthwhile read. I recently finished a Ph.D. and bailed on academia. I'd been working in a factory as an electrical engineer before this, and I naively thought I could do something about the overall poor preparation of my colleagues. (I worked with engineers who had grave difficulty with basic statistics, for example.)

While in grad school, I came to the demoralizing conclusion that the system was working exactly the way it was supposed to. The university, as an institution, has no interest at all in whether its students actually learn anything. Engineering professors are incentivized not to teach undergraduates -- indeed, there's a whole system of reward and punishment around the assignment of teaching duties. A light load is coveted, and the most elite professors manage to teach as few as two courses per year. My advisor drove this home when he told me that expressing an interest in educating undergraduates was career suicide, and I shouldn't waste my time.

The main reason college students don't learn to think is that it's not the univeristy's mission to teach them how. I've said it before in this forum, and I'll say it again. You can get a great education at the modern university, but nobody's going to stop you if you decide not to.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#192

Post by davidf18 » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

thebspatrol wrote: post #46

Animats wrote: post #34

Earlier 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 actually be really interested in knowing what percentage of people read opposing rhetoric. I easily spend far more time listening to and reading right-leaning rhetoric, despite being left leaning. I already know "my side". Why would I want to live in an echo chamber?

I have to read NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Economist, The Guardian, Breitbart, TimesofIsrael to get full information. NYT does a lot of censoring/under emphasizing of critical information. Of course there is also general reading that is important.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#193

Post by kerbalspacepro » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #160

If I'd used my critical thinking skills to go to an HVAC vocational track, following years of hourly / labor Summer jobs as a teenager, and took out a business loan half of what I've spent on University studies, I'd probably have a small empire by now. Universities are great for a liberal arts study track, but that's kind of it. I'm not even sure most require Students to study Retirement Planning or "How to Understan…

>Universities are great for a liberal arts study track, but that's kind of it.

The thing is, they're not even that good at that! If the liberals are were doing well, we'd expect the industries that the liberal arts degrees feed into to be doing exceptional. Of course, they're not doing exceptional.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#194

Post by jordanjustice » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:44 PM UTC

Interesting, and not entirely surprising.

I just finished Godin's altMBA two weeks ago, and it's all about critical thinking. This was a struggle for a lot of the students as they were either use to or expecting a typical college style instructional design.

The whole program was incredible and my mind is still spinning. https://altmba.com/

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#195

Post by davidf18 » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:45 PM UTC

Why wait for college to teach critical thinking skills? My father is a prof at a major university and we grew up discussing ideas, but high schools can teach critical thinking skills and problem solving. My high school was owned by the university and we did a lot of critical thinking.

Jewish religious schools (Yeshivas) teach critical thinking skills by studying the Talmud [1]. A number of Yeshiva students take the LSATs and skip college altogether to go directly to law school so powerful is the process of learning Talmud.

Basically Talmud is full of (often) legal arguments and stories and a lot of time is spent on thinking through/arguing edge conditions (e.g., a piece of property is found overlapping public space and private space).

The point is that college is absolutely not necessary to teach critical thinking skills and in my opinion this should be started at a much younger age.

Incidentally, I have found even graduates of Ivy League schools seem to not understand basic fundamentals. For example, in Economics, they don't seem to understand why housing is so expensive in certain cities and don't seem to have the analytical skills to understand why prices are high.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#196

Post by kerbalspacepro » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #94

raleighm wrote: post #89

Many 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).

I want to extend what you're saying- STEM gives the illusion of experience with formal logic to those within it. There is a reason why the Salem Hypothesis exists.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#197

Post by matwood » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #191

jseliger wrote: post #2

I've taught college. This study is wildly unsurprising. I've written about this in various places (e.g. https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... ), but most colleges have evolved majors and paths that are designed to move students through the system, collect their tuition money, and graduate them. In re-reading the previous sentence, I think I sound opposed to this. I am a little bit, maybe, bu…

Thanks for linking to your blog post, that was a worthwhile read. I recently finished a Ph.D. and bailed on academia. I'd been working in a factory as an electrical engineer before this, and I naively thought I could do something about the overall poor preparation of my colleagues. (I worked with engineers who had grave difficulty with basic statistics, for example.) While in grad school, I came to the demoralizing c…

> Engineering professors are incentivized not to teach undergraduates -- indeed, there's a whole system of reward and punishment around the assignment of teaching duties. A light load is coveted, and the most elite professors manage to teach as few as two courses per year.

I wonder if this has to do with the type of school. Where I went to college, the dept. chair on down rotated through the intro programming classes and then taught their speciality classes. The school definitely focused on teaching above research though that can also have downsides.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#198

Post by losteric » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #171

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered that maybe both the big "left" and "right" media is itself an echo chamber?

Indeed, the points on which mainstream American "right" and "left" media agree with each other are more numerous than the points on which they disagree.

Well I should hope so. A nation cannot exist without some social cohesion, Americans need to (and do) agree on most issues.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#199

Post by JuliaMel » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

The problem is that most students now go to school just to get a degree, a certification of sorts. They don't want to think and they're very resistant to any teaching that not "on the test."

What's more, college students have come to view their college enrollment as a commercial exchange where they expect to get "what they paid for." Unfortunately, for them, that's not critical thinking skills, but a "good" piece of paper that can get them a job.

Critical thinking can't be quantified or measured on a multiple-choice test, and is therefore becoming highly unpopular with students in even the best universities

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#200

Post by Bakary » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #192

thebspatrol wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually be really interested in knowing what percentage of people read opposing rhetoric. I easily spend far more time listening to and reading right-leaning rhetoric, despite being left leaning. I already know "my side". Why would I want to live in an echo chamber?

I have to read NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Economist, The Guardian, Breitbart, TimesofIsrael to get full information. NYT does a lot of censoring/under emphasizing of critical information. Of course there is also general reading that is important.

Interestingly, this is still a significantly limited echo chamber because these sources are all Anglo-centric, perhaps even the Times of Israel despite its location.

Of course, this number of publications is already a large investment of time so I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to do more.