"You'll Use This Everyday for the Rest of Your Life..."

[kaysixteen]

What exactly do those engineering grads who don't end up working in engineering do?  I suspect it's something that definitely allows them to take advantage of the math and science skills they did learn in college nonetheless.

[spork]

What exactly do those engineering grads who don't end up working in engineering do?  I suspect it's something that definitely allows them to take advantage of the math and science skills they did learn in college nonetheless.

The original graphic is interactive and shows that they are employed in everything from office support to sales to finance.

In the era when I was obtaining my bachelor's degree, Wall Street firms were sucking in huge numbers of college grads who had any kind of mathematical skills, and that included engineers. Also many of my roommates who went straight into the engineering work force upon graduation, instead of attending graduate school, complained that after about five years with any company they got shifted from the lab to management. Some did things like work for military contractors on satellite or weapons systems design before becoming high school math and science teachers. Others left corporate life to become entrepreneurs and consultants. In other words, career paths varied. But in no case did any of my friends have their lives altered by taking American History 101 in the first year of college. Given that this was a fairly elite slice of the general college-going population, I don't see how the "take one course in X" approach to gen eds -- whether X is a history, philosophy, math, or biology course -- delivers much benefit to the average college student.

[ciao_yall]

What exactly do those engineering grads who don't end up working in engineering do?  I suspect it's something that definitely allows them to take advantage of the math and science skills they did learn in college nonetheless.

The original graphic is interactive and shows that they are employed in everything from office support to sales to finance.

In the era when I was obtaining my bachelor's degree, Wall Street firms were sucking in huge numbers of college grads who had any kind of mathematical skills, and that included engineers. Also many of my roommates who went straight into the engineering work force upon graduation, instead of attending graduate school, complained that after about five years with any company they got shifted from the lab to management. Some did things like work for military contractors on satellite or weapons systems design before becoming high school math and science teachers. Others left corporate life to become entrepreneurs and consultants. In other words, career paths varied. But in no case did any of my friends have their lives altered by taking American History 101 in the first year of college. Given that this was a fairly elite slice of the general college-going population, I don't see how the "take one course in X" approach to gen eds -- whether X is a history, philosophy, math, or biology course -- delivers much benefit to the average college student.

OTOH, the thought that this group may never have had the chance to be exposed to history, philosophy, biology or literature at all is really scary.

[spork]

Everyone in this group was required to complete the same gen ed curriculum, which was 1) based on a distribution model that included humanities and social science categories, and 2) larger, in terms of credit hours, than gen ed curricula at many self-proclaimed "liberal arts colleges" (where a large portion of undergraduates are in majors like business, nursing, and education that require 60-90 credits).

Being "exposed" to subjects on average does very little if anything, whether one is at an elite or non-elite institution.

[Caracal]

What exactly do those engineering grads who don't end up working in engineering do?  I suspect it's something that definitely allows them to take advantage of the math and science skills they did learn in college nonetheless.

The original graphic is interactive and shows that they are employed in everything from office support to sales to finance.

In the era when I was obtaining my bachelor's degree, Wall Street firms were sucking in huge numbers of college grads who had any kind of mathematical skills, and that included engineers. Also many of my roommates who went straight into the engineering work force upon graduation, instead of attending graduate school, complained that after about five years with any company they got shifted from the lab to management. Some did things like work for military contractors on satellite or weapons systems design before becoming high school math and science teachers. Others left corporate life to become entrepreneurs and consultants. In other words, career paths varied. But in no case did any of my friends have their lives altered by taking American History 101 in the first year of college. Given that this was a fairly elite slice of the general college-going population, I don't see how the "take one course in X" approach to gen eds -- whether X is a history, philosophy, math, or biology course -- delivers much benefit to the average college student.

Two quick, different points.

1. "Have their lives altered" is a weird metric to use. It speaks again to the weird ideas about what education does going around here. Altering lives is a bit ambitious for me, all I really try to do in my teaching is get students to think about things in different ways.

2. The first part of your post highlights what I've been saying. Majors just aren't all that important. The reason they do, to some extent, predict things like future earnings, is just because they reflect the interests and mentalities of the students. I know humanities majors making a lot of money at tech firms doing things that are as far away from their majors as these engineers managing people.

[polly_mer]

As I posted before, we always think our students have substandard secondary education.  We always think that college freshmen should be much smarter than they are.  It's just what we do.

Let's do some numbers again.

Only about a third of high school seniors are college ready and yet 70% of high school graduates go to college within a year of graduation with about half those students attending community college.

One interpretation could be that many of the college-unready group simply don't finish high school and thus aren't in the category of high school graduates.  That's unlikely with the US high school graduation rate at 85% with a low of 71% (New Mexico)

We could quibble about what college ready means to move a numbers a bit.  However, more interesting is to look at historical trends of what percentage of the population went to college and who those folks were.  Yes, rich folks in the early twentieth century who were signaling probably weren't as qualified or motivated as the handful of scholarship students who really wanted to learn.  However, those rich folks probably were functionally literate and numerate.  Developmental classes didn't exist.

In recent years, many reports have come out indicating a substantial fraction of students are taking remedial courses in college.  Connecticut is one of those states that has commissioned a report with disheartening news of as many as half the students from struggling K-12 districts end up taking remedial classes in college. 

The state of Colorado did a pilot that had literally 8th graders taking the same lowest level remedial math course in college to see if better math instruction at an earlier age would help.  Colorado has been tracking remedial education for years now with the disheartening results that more than a third of the recent HS graduates need developmental education in college.  Having supplemental instruction for regular intro classes brought English pass rates up to 74%, but math still remains at 40% pass rates.  Similar results were found at Roxbury Community College in Massachusetts where supplemental instruction helped pass a credit-bearing course, but still had large math failures.

Unstated in those success stories is how many college-ready students attending selective or more elite institutions start in much higher math classes or skip many of the intro classes altogether by virtue of AP/IB/CLEP/dual credit/dual enrollment/CC summer credit.  Institutions only having college-ready students tend to not have developmental classes at all.  Instead, the underprepared, but highly motivated students who end up at somewhere like UT-Austin tend to need support that may or may not be available.  Yes, those students can rise to the occasion given support, but again, it would be so much better to just have good K-12 education in the first place for everyone.

The research on food insecurity and related issues on college campuses give a big range of numbers depending on who is doing the research because the US higher ed landscape is so diverse.  About half of college students start in community college and about 40% of the students enrolled in community college are low income.  The elite institutions that serve 4% of the college-going population likely do only have anecdotes about the 1% of their students from the 60% of the low SES; the community colleges who have up to 80% of their new students in developmental education likely see much more food insecurity and related problems that hinder progress, not just academic problems.

I will post again that college completion rate is up, despite a larger fraction of people enrolling who are college underprepared by any measure and self-reported study time continues to decline.  Since the elite institutions already had nice, high graduation rates, that means places that are taking underprepared students are graduating them.  Now, that might be a fabulous success story like Coppin State or Morgan State who serve the poorest of the poor so that doubling the graduation rate to 20-30% is a huge victory all around .  But I suspect that's not the case.

My personal experience has been that well-prepared students at institutions with standards are probably as good as they ever were.  However, once we get down to nearly open enrollment or actual open enrollment, a fair number of students would have been much better served by having better K-12 education instead of starting four levels below the first credit-bearing class in math and dropping out before they get to true college classes. 

In summary, the evidence indicates that more people are going to college, but a much larger fraction of them are unready and were ill-served by their K-12 education.  Decades ago, those folks simply would not have gone to college, but now "everyone" should go and it's a waste of effort for those who are unmotivated and a tragedy for those who were ripped off in K-12 and then have even more complicated adult lives with less support in college.

[Caracal]

As I posted before, we always think our students have substandard secondary education.  We always think that college freshmen should be much smarter than they are.  It's just what we do.

Let's do some numbers again.

Only about a third of high school seniors are college ready and yet 70% of high school graduates go to college within a year of graduation with about half those students attending community college.

One interpretation could be that many of the college-unready group simply don't finish high school and thus aren't in the category of high school graduates.  That's unlikely with the US high school graduation rate at 85% with a low of 71% (New Mexico)

We could quibble about what college ready means to move a numbers a bit.  However, more interesting is to look at historical trends of what percentage of the population went to college and who those folks were.  Yes, rich folks in the early twentieth century who were signaling probably weren't as qualified or motivated as the handful of scholarship students who really wanted to learn.  However, those rich folks probably were functionally literate and numerate.  Developmental classes didn't exist.

In recent years, many reports have come out indicating a substantial fraction of students are taking remedial courses in college.  Connecticut is one of those states that has commissioned a report with disheartening news of as many as half the students from struggling K-12 districts end up taking remedial classes in college. 

The state of Colorado did a pilot that had literally 8th graders taking the same lowest level remedial math course in college to see if better math instruction at an earlier age would help.  Colorado has been tracking remedial education for years now with the disheartening results that more than a third of the recent HS graduates need developmental education in college.  Having supplemental instruction for regular intro classes brought English pass rates up to 74%, but math still remains at 40% pass rates.  Similar results were found at Roxbury Community College in Massachusetts where supplemental instruction helped pass a credit-bearing course, but still had large math failures.

Unstated in those success stories is how many college-ready students attending selective or more elite institutions start in much higher math classes or skip many of the intro classes altogether by virtue of AP/IB/CLEP/dual credit/dual enrollment/CC summer credit.  Institutions only having college-ready students tend to not have developmental classes at all.  Instead, the underprepared, but highly motivated students who end up at somewhere like UT-Austin tend to need support that may or may not be available.  Yes, those students can rise to the occasion given support, but again, it would be so much better to just have good K-12 education in the first place for everyone.

The research on food insecurity and related issues on college campuses give a big range of numbers depending on who is doing the research because the US higher ed landscape is so diverse.  About half of college students start in community college and about 40% of the students enrolled in community college are low income.  The elite institutions that serve 4% of the college-going population likely do only have anecdotes about the 1% of their students from the 60% of the low SES; the community colleges who have up to 80% of their new students in developmental education likely see much more food insecurity and related problems that hinder progress, not just academic problems.

I will post again that college completion rate is up, despite a larger fraction of people enrolling who are college underprepared by any measure and self-reported study time continues to decline.  Since the elite institutions already had nice, high graduation rates, that means places that are taking underprepared students are graduating them.  Now, that might be a fabulous success story like Coppin State or Morgan State who serve the poorest of the poor so that doubling the graduation rate to 20-30% is a huge victory all around .  But I suspect that's not the case.

My personal experience has been that well-prepared students at institutions with standards are probably as good as they ever were.  However, once we get down to nearly open enrollment or actual open enrollment, a fair number of students would have been much better served by having better K-12 education instead of starting four levels below the first credit-bearing class in math and dropping out before they get to true college classes. 

In summary, the evidence indicates that more people are going to college, but a much larger fraction of them are unready and were ill-served by their K-12 education.  Decades ago, those folks simply would not have gone to college, but now "everyone" should go and it's a waste of effort for those who are unmotivated and a tragedy for those who were ripped off in K-12 and then have even more complicated adult lives with less support in college.

If we are doing links
https://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/the-long-history-of-teachers-complaining-about-students/

Meanwhile, in the fourteenth-century Álvaro Pelayo, who studied at the University of Bologna, commented "They attend classes but make no effort to learn anything....The expense money which they have from their parents or churches they spend in taverns, conviviality, games and other superfluities, and so they return home empty, without knowledge, conscience, or money." That sounds familiar...

Here is from the 50s, but could be Poly upthread.
James B. Conant, president of Harvard University and an influential spokesman for higher education, found the G.I. Bill "distressing" because it failed "to distinguish between those who can profit most by advanced
education and those who cannot." His ideal G.I. Bill would have financed the education "of a carefully selected number of returned veterans." Reflecting a common distrust of colleges' ability to maintain academic stan- dards, Conant feared that because of the G.I. Bill "we may find the least ca- pable among the war generation ... flooding the facilities for advanced education."

As could this...
Writing for a popular magazine in December 1944, Hutchins titled his article about the G.I. Bill and higher education "The Threat to American Education." Al- though he praised "the principle that there must be no relation between the education of a citizen and the income of his parents," Hutchins declared the G.I. Bill's educational provisions "unworkable." He predicted that colleges, in order to increase their incomes, would admit unqualified veterans and would not expel veterans incapable of doing college work. Colleges, he prog- nosticated, would keep students longer than "actually required" and would "train more men in a given skill than can get jobs in that skill." Hutchins,
who opposed in general the vocational orientation of higher education which he felt the Act accentuated, concluded that the G.I. Bill would "demoralize education and defraud the veteran."

[marshwiggle]

Writing for a popular magazine in December 1944, Hutchins titled his article about the G.I. Bill and higher education "The Threat to American Education." Although he praised "the principle that there must be no relation between the education of a citizen and the income of his parents," Hutchins declared the G.I. Bill's educational provisions "unworkable." He predicted that colleges, in order to increase their incomes, would admit unqualified veterans and would not expel veterans incapable of doing college work. Colleges, he prognosticated, would keep students longer than "actually required" and would "train more men in a given skill than can get jobs in that skill."

Sounds like a pretty accurate description of what has happened in higher education, but not restricted to veterans.

[spork]

What exactly do those engineering grads who don't end up working in engineering do?  I suspect it's something that definitely allows them to take advantage of the math and science skills they did learn in college nonetheless.

The original graphic is interactive and shows that they are employed in everything from office support to sales to finance.

In the era when I was obtaining my bachelor's degree, Wall Street firms were sucking in huge numbers of college grads who had any kind of mathematical skills, and that included engineers. Also many of my roommates who went straight into the engineering work force upon graduation, instead of attending graduate school, complained that after about five years with any company they got shifted from the lab to management. Some did things like work for military contractors on satellite or weapons systems design before becoming high school math and science teachers. Others left corporate life to become entrepreneurs and consultants. In other words, career paths varied. But in no case did any of my friends have their lives altered by taking American History 101 in the first year of college. Given that this was a fairly elite slice of the general college-going population, I don't see how the "take one course in X" approach to gen eds -- whether X is a history, philosophy, math, or biology course -- delivers much benefit to the average college student.

Two quick, different points.

1. "Have their lives altered" is a weird metric to use. It speaks again to the weird ideas about what education does going around here. Altering lives is a bit ambitious for me, all I really try to do in my teaching is get students to think about things in different ways.

The claim often made about distribution model general education requirements is that they give students the opportunity to have some kind of life-changing experience (variously labeled in non-measurable terms like "ways of thinking," "life of the mind," etc.) because those students are forced to take one course per subject in subjects that they otherwise wouldn't take any courses in. I've never seen any data indicating that this outcome occurs frequently enough in the U.S. post-secondary education system to justify the practice.

2. The first part of your post highlights what I've been saying. Majors just aren't all that important. The reason they do, to some extent, predict things like future earnings, is just because they reflect the interests and mentalities of the students. I know humanities majors making a lot of money at tech firms doing things that are as far away from their majors as these engineers managing people.

The major gap in earnings is between those who obtain bachelor's degrees and those who don't. I don't understand your fixation with defending the worth of bachelor's degrees in the humanities when I have never claimed that those degrees are worthless or ought to be eliminated. As polly has pointed out, and I can't remember if it's in this or the other thread, on average graduates of elite institutions do exceptionally well in whatever careers they end up in because 1) they entered college extremely well prepared, 2) benefit from the prestige associated with holding a degree from such an institution, and 3) are able to use their college experiences to further enhance their social capital (e.g., networking with classmates who will also become successful). Those at the other end of the spectrum who arrive without basic skills in literacy and numeracy -- skills that they should have acquired before college -- face an uphill battle that makes it exceedingly difficult for them to acquire the knowledge and skills they should get from a college education in four or even six years.

[Caracal]

Writing for a popular magazine in December 1944, Hutchins titled his article about the G.I. Bill and higher education "The Threat to American Education." Although he praised "the principle that there must be no relation between the education of a citizen and the income of his parents," Hutchins declared the G.I. Bill's educational provisions "unworkable." He predicted that colleges, in order to increase their incomes, would admit unqualified veterans and would not expel veterans incapable of doing college work. Colleges, he prognosticated, would keep students longer than "actually required" and would "train more men in a given skill than can get jobs in that skill."

Sounds like a pretty accurate description of what has happened in higher education, but not restricted to veterans.

Yes, that's why the US economy went into a long tailspin starting around 1950. It turned out that all these veterans were getting degrees in useless things and so many of them were underemployed or unemployed. Right?

[ciao_yall]

As I posted before, we always think our students have substandard secondary education.  We always think that college freshmen should be much smarter than they are.  It's just what we do.

Let's do some numbers again.

Only about a third of high school seniors are college ready and yet 70% of high school graduates go to college within a year of graduation with about half those students attending community college.

One interpretation could be that many of the college-unready group simply don't finish high school and thus aren't in the category of high school graduates.  That's unlikely with the US high school graduation rate at 85% with a low of 71% (New Mexico)

We could quibble about what college ready means to move a numbers a bit.  However, more interesting is to look at historical trends of what percentage of the population went to college and who those folks were.  Yes, rich folks in the early twentieth century who were signaling probably weren't as qualified or motivated as the handful of scholarship students who really wanted to learn.  However, those rich folks probably were functionally literate and numerate.  Developmental classes didn't exist.

In recent years, many reports have come out indicating a substantial fraction of students are taking remedial courses in college.  Connecticut is one of those states that has commissioned a report with disheartening news of as many as half the students from struggling K-12 districts end up taking remedial classes in college. 

The state of Colorado did a pilot that had literally 8th graders taking the same lowest level remedial math course in college to see if better math instruction at an earlier age would help.  Colorado has been tracking remedial education for years now with the disheartening results that more than a third of the recent HS graduates need developmental education in college.  Having supplemental instruction for regular intro classes brought English pass rates up to 74%, but math still remains at 40% pass rates.  Similar results were found at Roxbury Community College in Massachusetts where supplemental instruction helped pass a credit-bearing course, but still had large math failures.

Unstated in those success stories is how many college-ready students attending selective or more elite institutions start in much higher math classes or skip many of the intro classes altogether by virtue of AP/IB/CLEP/dual credit/dual enrollment/CC summer credit.  Institutions only having college-ready students tend to not have developmental classes at all.  Instead, the underprepared, but highly motivated students who end up at somewhere like UT-Austin tend to need support that may or may not be available.  Yes, those students can rise to the occasion given support, but again, it would be so much better to just have good K-12 education in the first place for everyone.

The research on food insecurity and related issues on college campuses give a big range of numbers depending on who is doing the research because the US higher ed landscape is so diverse.  About half of college students start in community college and about 40% of the students enrolled in community college are low income.  The elite institutions that serve 4% of the college-going population likely do only have anecdotes about the 1% of their students from the 60% of the low SES; the community colleges who have up to 80% of their new students in developmental education likely see much more food insecurity and related problems that hinder progress, not just academic problems.

I will post again that college completion rate is up, despite a larger fraction of people enrolling who are college underprepared by any measure and self-reported study time continues to decline.  Since the elite institutions already had nice, high graduation rates, that means places that are taking underprepared students are graduating them.  Now, that might be a fabulous success story like Coppin State or Morgan State who serve the poorest of the poor so that doubling the graduation rate to 20-30% is a huge victory all around .  But I suspect that's not the case.

My personal experience has been that well-prepared students at institutions with standards are probably as good as they ever were.  However, once we get down to nearly open enrollment or actual open enrollment, a fair number of students would have been much better served by having better K-12 education instead of starting four levels below the first credit-bearing class in math and dropping out before they get to true college classes. 

In summary, the evidence indicates that more people are going to college, but a much larger fraction of them are unready and were ill-served by their K-12 education.  Decades ago, those folks simply would not have gone to college, but now "everyone" should go and it's a waste of effort for those who are unmotivated and a tragedy for those who were ripped off in K-12 and then have even more complicated adult lives with less support in college.

If we are doing links
https://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/the-long-history-of-teachers-complaining-about-students/

Meanwhile, in the fourteenth-century Álvaro Pelayo, who studied at the University of Bologna, commented "They attend classes but make no effort to learn anything....The expense money which they have from their parents or churches they spend in taverns, conviviality, games and other superfluities, and so they return home empty, without knowledge, conscience, or money." That sounds familiar...

Here is from the 50s, but could be Poly upthread.
James B. Conant, president of Harvard University and an influential spokesman for higher education, found the G.I. Bill "distressing" because it failed "to distinguish between those who can profit most by advanced
education and those who cannot." His ideal G.I. Bill would have financed the education "of a carefully selected number of returned veterans." Reflecting a common distrust of colleges' ability to maintain academic stan- dards, Conant feared that because of the G.I. Bill "we may find the least ca- pable among the war generation ... flooding the facilities for advanced education."

As could this...
Writing for a popular magazine in December 1944, Hutchins titled his article about the G.I. Bill and higher education "The Threat to American Education." Al- though he praised "the principle that there must be no relation between the education of a citizen and the income of his parents," Hutchins declared the G.I. Bill's educational provisions "unworkable." He predicted that colleges, in order to increase their incomes, would admit unqualified veterans and would not expel veterans incapable of doing college work. Colleges, he prog- nosticated, would keep students longer than "actually required" and would "train more men in a given skill than can get jobs in that skill." Hutchins,
who opposed in general the vocational orientation of higher education which he felt the Act accentuated, concluded that the G.I. Bill would "demoralize education and defraud the veteran."

TLDR

"Ugh, kids today!"

Said, everyone in history...

[Wahoo Redux]

As I posted before, we always think our students have substandard secondary education.  We always think that college freshmen should be much smarter than they are.  It's just what we do.

Let's do some numbers again.

Only about a third of high school seniors are college ready and yet 70% of high school graduates go to college within a year of graduation with about half those students attending community college.

And yet the majority graduate and are generally successful...

...and yet, and yet, your numbers say they aren't ready to go to college...

...and yet the economy is strong and Democracy is safe...

...but your numbers can't be wrong, can they?  I mean, US News and some sort of national testing MUST be correct...

....right?  I mean, if can't be that standard testing is an indicator of jack***t, can it?

Naaaaah.  It's got to be that society is "screwed" because a large, amorphous governmental agency and a news magazine say so.

Fortunately civilization has never had exactly this perception before, so your perspective is unique and valid.

Very good thinking, Polly.  Glad to see you bring your scientific precision into your online discussions.

[Caracal]

TLDR

"Ugh, kids today!"

Said, everyone in history...

There are these basic dynamics between students and their professors that never change. We are people who liked college so much that we made a career out of it. Most of us were so busy being excited about 15th century Spanish poetry or thermodynamics or whatever, that we never noticed that most of our classmates were just going through the motions. The people we were friends with were mostly like us. Then you have this job where you have to deal with all these people who don't care about this stuff as much as we do and are much worse at it. And you keep doing it for new students every year. And you can always find evidence to support the things you want to believe, because academics are good at that.

[Aster]

The percentage of high school students in my state is even  lower than the national average. Less than a quarter of the high school graduates are expected to be "college ready". And yes, like Polly posted above, at least half of the "not ready" attend non-selective community colleges first.

The non-completion percentages for community college students are often much higher than at most 4-year institutions.  A great many of those students do not complete an AA degree. A great many of those students never transfer to a 4-year university. But much of the U.S. community college mission is less about academic success and more about simply providing academic access for the *possibility* of success.

This inconvenient truth is often forgotten or ignored by political leaders and the general public.

High failure rates at my community college are regularly tracked. I'm at an open enrollment institution, and I've bench-marked most of my assessments to match up with R2-level academic standards from my discipline (from a previous university that I worked at). This allows me to do somewhat accurate comparative analysis between completion rates without wondering if my assessment quality is different.

For one example course.
Pass rates at R2 - at least 70%
Pass rates at community college - under 60% (and less than 50% passing is not unusual)

[Wahoo Redux]

What is the transfer rate from CCs to 4 year colleges?  How many people begin at a CC and eventually graduate?  I can look that up when I am done teaching in a couple hours, but I figured someone around'yer parts has that at their fingertips.