Andy,
You are definitely not alone. This is something that has been
bothering me for a long time and I think may only get worse in the
future as tuitions keep rising. Below I include an exchange I had
with Diane Ebert-May, who is a leader in research on education
pedagogy. She is at Michigan State University and does some amazing
work (links below). If anyone has ideas, she does!
From me:
We spend a great deal of effort understanding what techniques we as
educators use in the classroom and the effect these have on student
learning. On the flipside I think that maybe not enough focus has
been placed on how the changing socioeconomic landscape of our
students is affecting their education. For example, I have many
students who must work 1-2 jobs in order to afford school and this
work prevents many of them from attending office hours and probably
detracts from the time they can devote to studying. Many of them
live at home as well. With tuitions rising and federal aid
falling, this trend is likely to increase and could have a
substantial impact on students ability to receive a quality
education. One thing I have always wanted to do was take a
volunteer survey of my students to find out how many of them take
loans, are in debt, work 20+ hours outside of class, have children,
etc. and how this has affected their academic performance. With
the scale of your classes and the resources at your disposal, this
may be something easier for you to implement than myself at this
point. It may be the kind of data that helps understand why even
though more people go to college than ever before, they still fail
to learn or achieve after 4+ years of instruction.
An excerpt of her response:
In regards to your idea below, I do believe we have those data,
(not me personally, but institutions). Offices of financial aid
and student affairs track those things because it is necessary
information for both state and federal financial aid.
The correlation with academic success more complicated to determine
-- First we have to define success -- eg graduation rates, time to
graduation -- those data are available. HOWEVER, data comparing
what student know and are able to do over the years is more
difficult to gather because grades are the primary variable
available -- and most of the time, we don't have clear definitions
of what "grades" mean.....What we do know is how learning has not
changed over the decades...that is, the first cartoon (prof head/
student funnel) is pretty much how it is...with slight variations
(clickers :-)
We should search the literature -- to see what is out there -- the
journals would likely be student affairs-type or higher ed
administration.. I may have some NRC reports done in the last 10
years that would get at the nature of student bodies.
From my experience, students were working jobs just as much thirty
years ago -- what they did not have were all the choices NOT to
study -- from electronics to computers to cell phones!
While it is true that students in the past have worked while
attending school, I would argue that the comparison is not as strong
because the overall COST of education has risen so dramatically. Not
only in tuition but the cost of books, housing, food...just about
every aspect of college life. To make matters worse, schools have
given away huge contracts to corporations to run food services,
bookstores and these costs are passed onto the students (because the
goal of every business it to make money). While this may save the
school money, students are disproportionately affected. But this is
all a sad result of the defunding of public education. One major
trend in the US that bothers me is state and federal legislatures
that are proposing laws to force schools (even private ones) to dip
into their endowments in order to lower tuition costs instead of
proposing taxes or ballot initiatives to buoy schools and lower
education costs. It's too bad the obsession with lower taxes has
infected Canada as well.
And then there's the entitlement issue. "I spend X number of $$ and
time, therefore I deserve an A" is pretty prevalent, even if students
don't get in your face about it. It seems to me that many of my
students treat college like some extension of high school (or maybe
it's because they're local) and don't take it seriously and/or get
angry with the teacher for hurting their grade. It is just another
step in their life towards getting a job. The other problem with this
degree=job attitude is that students only care about information that
will directly impact their future success. I heard recently about
research that shows college-age people today are less mature and
capable than their counterparts 30 years ago. There is an interesting
article in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education talking about
whether this type of liberal arts education has any meaning or place
anymore in current society, since the wants and needs of students and
society as a whole have changed. Medical school will always siphon
off the best and brightest as long as it continues to pay better and
offer greater prestige in the community.
Another thing that I have been thinking about is if the brains of our
students are fundamentally different than students of the past, or
those that did not grow up with a steady stream of TV, computers,
video games, etc. Isn't there research that shows differences in
brain activity in kids who watch a lot of TV and play video games for
so many hours a day? It could be that we need to radically rethink
the way we are teaching kids if we want any hope of them learning to
think for themselves. As a caveat, I recommend the research that
Diane Ebert-May is doing: http://www.plantbiology.msu.edu/faculty/
faculty-research/diane-ebert-may/ and http://www.first2.org/
Chris
On Mar 4, 2008, at 5:44 PM, Andrew Park wrote:
With respect tot he thread that began "education to what degree?",
consider the following:
1. Canadian higher ed suffered severe government cuts in the
1990s, which were compensated for by partial deregulation of fees
and increasing ties to private industry.
2. At the same time, the view is promulgated that you have to
have a degree to get a decent job. This is not true, but never
mind; it suited the goals of university administrations.
3. In part because of this and partly due to demographics, there
has been an explosion in the number of students attending higher
ed institutions in Canada.
4. However, many of these students are working substantially
outside of school to meet the increasing costs of higher education.
5. As a result, I believe the amount of time they devote to
coursework may have fallen, yet they expect more out of the degree
because of the money investment that is needed.
6. Ergo, grades fall, especially for those who work 20 hours a
week or more outside of school (personal observation), and yet
expectations remain inflated because the degree is expected to
guarantee a job, which let me tell you is not a done deal for many
disciplines.
Finally, does anyone out there have an intuition that we are
getting less able to attract the best students into ecology and
environmentally based courses of studies?
A good proportion of the students in my institution believe that
they are going to medical school. We also have towns and small
cities who will sponsor your Medical School education if you sign
a contract to work in that community as a family Doctor for a
period of time. I don't know about the states, but it is pretty
difficult for any environmental career to compete with a community
that is offering $100,000 guaranteed to newly graduated doctors.
All the Best,
Andy Park (University of Winnipeg).
<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
Christopher Noto
Dept. of Ecology and Evolution
Stony Brook University
650 Life Sciences
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245
http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/~crnoto
"Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book,
written in
a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where
they live."
-Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy (1932- )
<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
Christopher Noto
Dept. of Ecology and Evolution
Stony Brook University
650 Life Sciences
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245
http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/~crnoto
"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is
often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can
always be made precise." -- J.W. Tukey
