Of course some students don’t expect a return on their college investment in the form of learning. Their aim is to acquire a credential. When I talk about these matters with my students, I make an analogy to shopping at the supermarket. If the point is merely to get a receipt and get out, it makes perfect sense to grab something, anything, and head to the shortest line. No waiting on Register Four! But having something to show for your effort is another matter. And if everyone has a receipt, it’s what’s in your cart — or what you take away from your education — that counts.Aso, here's a good interview with Richard Arum, the book's co-author, from Minnesota Public Radio.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
"It's what's in your cart that counts"
I'm really looking forward to our Academically Adrift reading group next week. I came across this nice analogy from Michael Leddy at Orange Crate Art:
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My book is on order; I'm looking forward to reading and discussing this too.
ReplyDeleteGood analogy!
ReplyDeleteOf course, if no one else has anything good in their cart, and the good stuff is more expensive (in terms of time and effort, say), then it might not be worthwhile to get the good stuff—even if doing so would set you apart from the crowd in some way.
ReplyDeleteThat is, it's not enough to show our students that there are benefits to be gained from taking their classes seriously. We'll need to show that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.
I hate to be the pessimist there, because I don't like the system any more than anyone else does, but I think this part of the quote is not quite right:
ReplyDelete"But having something to show for your effort is another matter. And if everyone has a receipt, it’s what’s in your cart — or what you take away from your education — that counts."
I mean, sure - if you ask _me_, I agree. But why should a student buy into this line of reasoning? They shouldn't, and won't - if credential thinking is salient for them. In the grips of that thinking, the reasonable thing to think is: "when businesses start sorting people out on those lines, let me know."
Which gets us to the real issue: employers. Do they, for the most part, hire for the credential? Yes. If they, for the most part, changed their hiring processes to highlight in some way whether students have learned (say) critical thinking, students would think more about the contents of their degrees.
That said, if you remember, in Academically Adrift, the authors seem to suggest that students aren't really "thinking" of their degrees as credentials while performing some kind of long term calculation of their own utility. Instead, it's really just the _result_ of their behavior, which is really motivated by something more simple: bad habits.