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Auburn University reports that it’s one of the first American colleges to participate in the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA. According to the Auburn press release:
Recent results from a pioneering study involving more than two dozen colleges and universities across the nation show significant gains in the intellectual and academic skills of Auburn University students as they progress from freshmen to seniors.
The findings were presented today to the Auburn Board of Trustees, which has supported the university’s involvement in the program for data-based measurement of student learning since the program began in 2005.
Measuring the actual gains in knowledge students accrue while in college is one thing people who follow higher education have been interested in for many years. Colleges, however, have actively resisted making this information public.
Auburn reports that its results “place the university in the top third of the 26 institutions that completed all phases of the four-year study.”
At this point very few schools have completed the full study. Those 26 schools represent less than 1 percent of colleges and universities in the United States. Other schools include Ohio State University, Syracuse University, and George Washington University.
It will be interesting to see what these other schools found when they looked at student learning over four years of college.
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MNPundit on February 08, 2010 7:57 PM:
I would guess the answers are not much and not much. You probably learn something in your field, but otherwise afaik you just try to forget the other stuff and focus on partying.
MNPundit on February 08, 2010 7:59 PM:
I should add that more elite colleges or ones that are known of as engineering or science schools probably do teach more.
jimBOB on February 08, 2010 8:27 PM:
In fairness to liberal arts institutions, part of what they are attempting to impart (at least to undergrads) is more of a process of thinking than a specific data set. At least that's the theory.
IMHO the real value of an elite university education is more about networking than about learning. Go to Harvard and you will be surrounded by students whose parents have enough money/pull to get their kids into Harvard. Play your cards right and you'll have an entree to the upper levels of the economy such parents inhabit.
Texas Aggie on February 08, 2010 9:24 PM:
Jim Bob touches an important point. Check it out. Networking is an important part of the bigger elite institutions, especially for those involved in the Greek scene (Buy a friend). But the elite institutions, with the obvious exceptions of Yale and the Harvard Business School, generally don't let nonachievers stick around. Most probably leave on their own because no one likes having failure shoved in his face on a daily basis, but the rest are requested to sever their connections with the institution.
So one reason to expect that there will be an increase in knowledge gained is that the dunces are no longer around when the second round of tests is administered. Texas has put this technique to good use to show that its high schools are doing well.
concerned parent on February 09, 2010 9:22 AM:
Of course institutions resist. The notion that one standardized test gives an accurate measure of students' learning over a four year period is ridiculous. And most of these are done using very small samples of the student population. There are no guarantees that every school is administering them similarly.