Why Our Kollege Students Isn't Learning

Back in September at the outset of the academic year, I bloviated about why, despite the fact that U.S. universities are the best anywhere, its students are ill prepared for the world that they will encounter beyond ivied campus walls, let alone that they certainly will not make that world less tumultuous -- kinder, gentler, and more equitable and prosperous -- than I and my classmates four decades earlier.

Now comes a study that concludes most undergraduates don't learn squat by way of broad-based skills and knowledge.

The study's authors conclude that:

No actors in the [higher education] system are primarily interested in undergraduates' academic growth, although many are interested in student retention and persistence. Limited learning on college campuses is not a crisis, because the institutional actors implicated in the system are receiving the organizational outcomes that they seek, and therefore neither the institutions themselves nor the system as a whole is in any way challenged or threatened."

Sad, isn't it?