According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills-including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing-during their first two years of college. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there?įor a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born.

A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.Publisher’s description: In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. He received a Masters of Education in Teaching and Curriculum from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. He is author of Judging School Discipline: A Crisis of Moral Authority (Harvard University Press, 2013) coauthor of Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011) as well as coeditor of Improving Quality in American Higher Education: Learning Outcomes and Assessment for the 21st Century (Jossey Bass, 2016), Improving Learning Environments: School Discipline and Student Achievement in Comparative Perspectives (Stanford University Press, 2012), and Stratification in Higher Education: A Comparative Study (Stanford University Press, 2007).

He recently served as senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2013-2015 and director of the Education Research Program at the Social Science Research Council from 2006-2013, where he oversaw the development of the Research Alliance for New York City Schools, a research consortium designed to conduct ongoing evaluation of the New York City public schools. Richard Arum is dean of the School of Education and professor of education and (by courtesy) sociology, criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine.

Academically Adrift by Richard Arum