(From the Chronicle of Higher Education)

        Editor’s Note: The cited study in this story (below)–contrary to the Chronicle‘s deceptive headline–fails to rebut the alarming results in student-learning outcomes documented in Academically Adrift.


        Why? Because, as Adrift lead author Richard Arum clarifies in the article, “Comparing the scores of a sample of freshmen with a different sample of seniors, for instance, could make gains appear larger than the ones that individual students actually experience, because many students drop out before their senior year.” 

        This is exactly what the new study did. 

        But don’t expect organs like the higher-education-establishment-friendly Chronicle to give proper weight to this difference.  Instead, expect the new mantra to be, “Academically Adrift’s findings have been called into doubt by more recent studies of gains in student learning.”

        In other words, “Things are just fine in higher education.  –Now give us more money.”

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Students Might Not be “Academically Adrift” After All
By Dan Berrett

Students show substantial gains in learning during college, as measured by a standardized test of critical thinking, according to two studies conducted by the creator of the test.

While perhaps not a direct rebuke to Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the blockbuster 2011 book that documented what its authors argued was meager learning on campuses, the studies, by the Council for Aid to Education, do offer a sunnier counternarrative.

“It’s probably a more nuanced story,” said Roger Benjamin, the council’s president, in an interview on Friday. The results described in reports on the studies, “Does College Matter? Measuring Critical-Thinking Outcomes Using the CLA” and “Three Principle Questions About Critical-Thinking Tests,” were presented in an off-the-record session here at the American Enterprise Institute. READ MORE HERE