Half of American College Students Learn Nothing in First Two Years (Lower Division).
Feb. 9, 2011
A story in USA Today summarizes the findings of a new book on college life. It turns out that almost 50% of the students show no gains in lower division: freshman and sophomore years.
After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.
This fact is a red light to parents: "Send your child to a community college, or else have him get credit through CLEP exams for under $2,000."
In short, as I have long said, never pay retail for college. //www.garynorth.com/public/729.cfm
Why do students do poorly? The book blames the schools' "publish or perish" rules. This is nonsense. Professors have always had this requirement. That's why they hire teaching assistants. I was one in the late 1960s. Students learned back then. So, why the decline? This: "Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows."
Yet students earned a 3.2 grade point average: high B's. Neither they nor their parents know how little they learn.
My conclusion: colleges are involved in massive fraud. But it's legal.
Don't get scammed. If you pay over $3,000, total, for the first two years of your child's college education, you're being foolish.