Firstly, I think current admittedly white US college students are likely the lowest performing student demographic in the world, so this is the low bar. Saying the authors are lamenting the drop is standards seems accurate to me.
Something I found interesting is the suggestion that these students, as bad as they seem, were still improved over when they were admitted to the school. Something the school was measuring as though they were preparing to defend their department budgets. I would argue that having universities run as businesses drives the standards down with self serving statistics like these, meant to muddy the waters IRT the student's actual abilities.
Another point that bothered me was the bit about the students teaching themselves how to read. Context clues, metaphor and simile were all things covered multiple times in my grammar school and middle school classes. Are we missing this coursework in lower schools today? If so, and the professors are finding this, the college coursework needs to adapt.
It feels like the professors feel as entitled to keep doing what they always did as the students feel entitled to their diplomas.
WheelsAtLarge · 1d ago
"Michaelmas term lately over" I had too look this up. I didn't realise that I cannot read.
pbohun · 23h ago
Michaelmas Term was the only phrase I didn't know. Apparently it's still used in the UK (and I'm not from there).
Proper nouns are trivia though. The more important part of the document is that students couldn't tell the difference between what was literal and what was metaphor. For students that were in their 3rd year of university as English majors, that's quite a problem. By that point they should have read hundreds of passages from books written in the 19th and 20th centuries.
ThrowawayR2 · 14h ago
The essay says "They have a dictionary, reference material, and their phones on hand to assist in looking up any unfamiliar terms, ..." so looking up unfamiliar words is permitted.
slwvx · 14h ago
Some questions:
* Were the students motivated to take the 20 minute session seriously? It sounds to me like they wanted to get done with it as soon as possible or otherwise didn't care about the outcome.
* I vaguely remember that some study found engineers read the most (or something like that) of all professions. What would happen if you gave the same session to engineering students?
* What would happen if you gave the test to students at Stanford?
Firstly, I think current admittedly white US college students are likely the lowest performing student demographic in the world, so this is the low bar. Saying the authors are lamenting the drop is standards seems accurate to me.
Something I found interesting is the suggestion that these students, as bad as they seem, were still improved over when they were admitted to the school. Something the school was measuring as though they were preparing to defend their department budgets. I would argue that having universities run as businesses drives the standards down with self serving statistics like these, meant to muddy the waters IRT the student's actual abilities.
Another point that bothered me was the bit about the students teaching themselves how to read. Context clues, metaphor and simile were all things covered multiple times in my grammar school and middle school classes. Are we missing this coursework in lower schools today? If so, and the professors are finding this, the college coursework needs to adapt.
It feels like the professors feel as entitled to keep doing what they always did as the students feel entitled to their diplomas.
Proper nouns are trivia though. The more important part of the document is that students couldn't tell the difference between what was literal and what was metaphor. For students that were in their 3rd year of university as English majors, that's quite a problem. By that point they should have read hundreds of passages from books written in the 19th and 20th centuries.
* Were the students motivated to take the 20 minute session seriously? It sounds to me like they wanted to get done with it as soon as possible or otherwise didn't care about the outcome.
* I vaguely remember that some study found engineers read the most (or something like that) of all professions. What would happen if you gave the same session to engineering students?
* What would happen if you gave the test to students at Stanford?