While “growth is quite limited” overall, Arum and Roksa write that “some students” do in fact “demonstrate notable gains” (p. that involve critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. If students are not being asked by their professors to read and write on a regular basis in their coursework, it is hard to imagine how they will improve their capacity to master performance tasks. While a much more precise inquiry into student reading and writing would certainly be beneficial, these findings seem to indicate that students are not being asked to do enough reading and writing. Specifically, they found that: “Fifty percent of students in our sample had not taken a single course during the prior semester that required more than twenty pages of writing, and one-third had not taken one that required even forty pages of reading per week” (p. Arum and Roksa present another finding that suggests that many students are not challenged to work on those very areas in which they are not improving. If students aren’t trying to learn, that may not be entirely their fault. 36).īad News #3: Many Students Are Not Challenged These findings are made all the more “disconcerting” when Arum and Roksa go on to point out that “at least one study has indicated that most of the gains in general skills occur in the first two years of college” and that another study “reported that students’ academic motivation and interest in academic subject matter declined during their first year in college, leaving little hope that they would notably improve their academic skills in subsequent years” (p. While they may be acquiring subject-specific knowledge or greater self-awareness on their journeys through college, many students are not improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. With a large sample of more than 2,300 students, we observe no statistically significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills for at least 45 percent of the students in our study. In what is certainly the most provocative snippet of the book, Arum and Roksa write: Bad News #1: Most Students Are Not Learning

Academically adrift book