Gary Null Award-Winning Documentaries That Make A Difference
Gary Null say NO to GMO!!! part 1.mp4
Gary Null In Huntington - Knocking On the Devil's Door Screening
Dr. Andrew Wakefield response to the measles outbreak in South Wales
Forging his way through the predictable UK media censorship: Dr Andrew Wakefield Responds to Measles Outbreak in Swansea
Entries in Education (45)
Ways College Admissions Committees Stack the Deck in Favor of Already Privileged Applicants
Affirmative action has been the subject of much media debate recently, as the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on October 10 involving the controversial Fisher v. University of Texas “reverse racism” case. The plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, alleges that she was declined admission to the university as a result of affirmative action policies that left her at a disadvantage because she is white.
Contemporary debates about affirmative action policies that take race into account tend to presume that, in our post-Civil Rights era, the U.S. is a pure meritocracy that rewards the best and brightest. But this isn’t quite true. Affirmative action is used to offset other arbitrary identifiers that admissions committees are allowed to consider, many of which further enshrine existing social hierarchies according to race and class. Here are just four criteria admissions committees are allowed to consider that reward already privileged students.
1. Legacy Admissions
Six years ago, I had a conversation with a Canadian professor who had earned his PhD at an Ivy League American university. He told me he could never understand the U.S. tolerance for legacy admissions (in which a student with a family member who attended a given university would be privileged in that school’s admissions process) and suggested that legacy admissions “amounts to affirmative action for the rich.” Another Canadian professor who had earned her PhD at an elite American university overheard our conversation and chimed in. She recalled teaching numerous legacy students whose academic performances she found substandard at best.
Former President George W. Bush’s mediocre academic record at Yale is one of the more famous examples [3] of this phenomenon, one that is a particularly big problem [4] at Ivy League schools and other elite institutions. In their 2011 book, Higher Education, How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – and What We Can Do about It, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus note that each legacy applicant to Brown University has the word “legacy” written in the top corner of his or her file. It isn’t clear precisely what effect this has on an applicant’s chances; the Brown Alumni Association [5], whose Web site instructs viewers to contact it “for a discussion of Brown legacy statistics,” tells AlterNet that Brown does not publish information about legacy admissions. But we know that legacy status matters overall.
To wit: according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a 2011 Harvard study [6] showed that, “all other things being equal, legacy applications got a 23.3-percentage-point increase in their probability of admission” to 30 elite universities. And students with at least one parent who attended the competitive institutions as undergraduates – called “primary legacies” – had a staggering 45.1-percentage-point admissions advantage. In other words, a non-legacy applicant with, say, a 10 percent change of admission would have a 33.3 percent chance of admission as a legacy student and a 55.1 percent chance of being admitted as a primary legacy.
Why do schools do this? Admissions departments are reluctant to discuss the practice, but as economist Peter Sacks told the New York Times [7], “Elite institutions have an implicit bargain with their alumni…You give us money, and we will move your kids to the front of the line.”
The inequalities perpetuated by legacy admissions are shocking on their own, but all the more so when you take into account how little consideration is given to poor students, in light of the academic and other difficulties they may have faced. In his book, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Shamus Rahman Khan writes that while the legacy children of elites receive special consideration, “poorer students are afforded no such luxury.” He explains, “Though poor students experience a host of disadvantages – from lower-quality schools to difficult access to out-of-school enrichment programs to the absence of support when they struggle – colleges are largely blind to such struggles, treating poorer students as if they were the same as rich ones.” Except, that is, when those wealthier students happen to be legacies.
2. SAT Scores
It’s a well-known truism [8] that the Scholastic Aptitude Test is a racist tool for college admissions. It’s also the first thing most admissions committees see on a student’s application.
The test’s racist reputation extends to its origins. Its creator, psychologist Carl C. Brigham, was a well-known eugenicist; his 1923 Army Alpha Test, first adapted as the Standard Aptitude Test for Harvard admissions in 1934, culminated in a racial breakdown of scores. Brigham felt that American education was in a downward spiral and argued [9] that deterioration in American intelligence would “proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial mixture becomes more and more extensive.”
Of course, standardized testing did not have only reactionary proponents in its early incarnations. It was first taken up by universities to create a more meritocratic – and less legacy-based – admission system. But it hasn’t shaken out in such a meritocratic way. For example, students from relatively well-off families can take expensive courses through private companies like Kaplan and the Princeton Review to learn tricks for boosting their SAT scores. Kaplan’s most popular 18-hour course costs [10] $599. At Princeton Review, courses range [11] from $299 to $1999.
Studies still find that SAT scores discriminate against minorities and women – and do a poor job of forecasting future student performance. According to the non-profit advocacy group Fair Test [12], women score an average of 35-40 points lower than men on the SAT --despite earning overwhelmingly higher first year grades once enrolled in college. For non-native English speakers, test scores are about 91 points lower despite first-year grades equivalent to those of white native English speakers.
Finally, according to Fair Test’s Web site, “The ability of SAT I scores to predict freshman grades, undergraduate class rank, college graduation rates, and attainment of a graduate degree is weaker for African-American students than for whites.” The SAT has become such a rite of passage in US culture that its biases are rarely discussed. But, in fact, it disproportionately favors white male students, while putting equally deserving female students and students of color at a comparative disadvantage.
3. Parental Income
When I was applying to colleges from my home state of North Carolina in 1997, many of my peers chose not to apply to Duke University, believing that their parents’ middle-class income would be found wanting and prevent them from being admitted, given that Duke was not, at the time, a “need-blind” university. In those days, students were widely under the impression that they were required to list parental income and assets directly on the Duke application. Duke’s dean of undergraduate admissions, Christopher Guttentag, tells AlterNet that the policy was gone by at least 1992, when his tenure began. But the recent history of “need-aware” admissions at Duke helped create today’s deeply entrenched beliefs in urban North Carolina communities that Duke is a school for the children of wealthy parents.
Of course, any U.S. citizen who requires financial aid to attend college completes a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (or FAFSA) that includes similar information about parental income. When a college has a need-aware policy, this means that students from relatively well-off families – that is, families who may be able to pay close to full tuition -- could be privileged when it comes to the admissions game. In order to become need-blind (and forgo the need to weigh a student’s ability to pay for her or his education), a school needs to have a way of funding the students it admits. This means need-blind policies will always be at risk during difficult economic times, and students in need always vulnerable to economic forces beyond their control.
Duke and many other research institutions have long since switched to a need-blind admissions process, but not by any legal mandate. And many colleges, especially small liberal arts schools, have started talking about ending need-blind admissions [13] since their endowments have not fully recovered from the 2008 economic downturn. According to an October 30 Inside Higher Ed report [13], the colleges considering the change include “wealthy institutions like Grinnell College and not-so-wealthy institutions like Albright College, in Pennsylvania.” And the prestigious Wesleyan University has already abandoned its need-blind policy because according to University President Michael Roth, it was just too expensive [13].
4. Criminal Background Check
During the mid-1990s, college applications commonly asked whether or not applicants had ever been convicted of a felony. Felony conviction was – and is – considered a legitimate reason for discrimination against an applicant. Most high school seniors applying for colleges are asked this routine question on their applications, but for some, actual criminal background checks have become much more commonplace.
In 2007, when a Virginia Tech student opened fire on students and professors on campus before killing himself, many in the public and the media asked [14] why Virginia Tech hadn’t routinely subjected its applicants to criminal background checks. Since then, according toUniversity Business [15], criminal background checks have been on the rise. That same year, the University of North Carolina system started ordering background checks on certain students, “because they had unexplained gaps in their applications or admitted involvement in a crime.” The practice has only been taken up slowly, however, as universities fear [14] being accused of profiling potential students. Thus far, the checks have become more prevalent among students entering vocational fields like teaching, pharmacy, nursing or physical therapy, in which students must work with either minor students or vulnerable patients.
But the practice is so new that its legal implications have yet to be hashed out, and there is no current mechanism for distinguishing non-violent felonies like marijuana possession from more serious crimes like armed burglary or assault. It’s already difficult for students with minor adolescent drug convictions to attend college – under current federal law [16], they are not eligible for student loans. And because black youth are imprisoned at a rate nearly 10 times [17] that of white youth for drug offenses, and black and Hispanic youth account for about 70 percent [18] of all youth arrests, this policy disproportionately penalizes youth of color, many of them poor. Furthermore, this policy means that one mistake in early adolescence can permanently destroy a student’s chances of attending college if they don’t earn full scholarships or their parents can’t afford to pay for their education.
Clearly, there are many arbitrary factors that go into a college admissions decision -- some of which benefit already-privileged applicants, and others that attempt to correct for deep historical imbalances. It’s long past time to stop stigmatizing affirmative action, and look instead at the various ways the system still unfairly privileges well-off students, while continuing to perpetuate the inequalities affirmative action is supposed to help eradicate.
How Kids Are Getting Hooked on Pills for Life
Where do parents and teachers get the idea there's something wrong with kids that only an expensive drug can fix? From Big Pharma's seamless web of ads, subsidized doctors, journals, medical courses and conferences, paid "patient" groups, phony public services messages and reporters willing to serve as stenographers.
Free stenography for Pharma from sympathetic media includes articles like "One in 40 Infants Experience Baby Blues, Doctors Say," on ABC News [4] and "Preschool Depression: The Importance of Early Detection of Depression in Young Children," on Science Daily [5].
For many, the face of the drugs-not-hugs message is Harold Koplewicz, author of the pop bestseller It's Nobody's Fault, and former head of NYU's prestigious Child Study Center. In a 1999 Salon [6] article, Koplewicz reiterated his "no-fault" statement, assuring parents that psychiatric illness is not caused by bad parenting. "It is not that your mother got divorced, or that your father didn't wipe you the right way," he said. "It really is DNA roulette: You got blue eyes, blond hair, sometimes a musical ear, but sometimes you get the predisposition for depression."
Many regard the NYU Child Study Center, which Koplewicz founded and led before leaving in 2009 to start his own facility, as helping to usher in the world of brave new pediatric medicine in which children, toddlers and infants, once expected to outgrow their problems, are now diagnosed with lifelong psychiatric problems. The Child Study Center is “a threat to the health and welfare of children,” and its doctors are “hustlers working to increase their 'client' population and their commercial value to psychotropic drug manufacturers,” charged Vera Sharav [7], president of the watchdog group, Alliance for Human Research Protection.
A look at the center's stated mission [8] provides no reassurance. Its goal of "eliminating the stigma of being or having a child with a psychiatric disorder," and "influencing child-related public policy," sounds a lot like a Pharma sales plan. And its boast about having "a structure that allows recruitment of patients for research studies and then provides 'real-world' testing for successful controlled-environment findings," could send chills down the backs of parents afraid their kids will be guinea pigs or money-making subjects.
In 2007, the fears of the Child Study Center's skeptics were confirmed when it launched an aggressive, scare tactic marketing campaign called Ransom Notes in 2007. "We have your son," said one ad, [9] created with bits of disparate type like a ransom note from a kidnapper. "We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning…Autism."
"We have your daughter. We are forcing her to throw up after every meal she eats. It’s only going to get worse," said another ad signed "Bulimia."
"We are in possession of your son. We are making him squirm and fidget until he is a detriment to himself and those around him. Ignore this and your kid will pay," said another add from "ADHD." Other ransom ads came from kidnappers named Depression, Asperger’s Syndrome and OCD.
Created pro bono by advertising giant BBDO, the ads were planned to run in New York magazine, Newsweek, Parents, Education Update, Mental Health News and other publications and on 11 billboards and 200 kiosks, according to the press release. [9]
Immediate Outrage
The hostage campaign drew immediate public outrage and more than a dozen advocacy groups joined together in an online petition calling for an end to it. “This is a demonstration of the assaultive tactics used by psychiatry today--in particular, academic psychiatrists and university-based medical centers that are under the influence of their pharmaceutical partners,” Vera Sharav wrote in alerts to AHRP’s mailing list. “If Dr. Koplewicz et al. are not stopped, the campaign will be hitting the rest of the country,” she warned, and informed readers that the campaign was formulated by BBDO, “a major direct to consumer prescription drug advertising firm,” asking the New York State Attorney General’s office to investigate.
Days after the backlash, the center revoked the advertising campaign “after the effort drew a strongly negative reaction,” reported [10] the New York Times. Koplewicz told the Times the decision was made by the center with no pressure from New York University and they planned to introduce a new campaign in the next three months. However, he left the Child Study Center at NYU in 2009 to start his own facility, initially called the Child Study Center Foundation, but changed to the Child Mind Institute, in 2010.
There was more controversy when Koplewicz left the center. When he announced his resignation, New York University "forbade him from entering his office and it pushed out professors who had said they wanted to join him at Child Mind Institute,” reported the New York Times. [11] Twelve NYU professors nevertheless followed Koplewicz to the Child Mind Institute as well as most of the Child Study Center’s influential board of directors, which included Garber Neidich, a chairwoman at the Whitney Museum, the founders of the Tribeca Film Festival founders and some well known financiers. The toxic send-off was followed by the New York State Office of Mental Health firing Koplewicz [12] from his job of nearly four years as director of the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, an affiliate of NYU School of Medicine.
Though Koplewicz' Child Mind Institute is supposedly a non-profit, it is ensconced on Park Avenue in Manhattan and Koplewicz' hourly rate “can be as high as $1,000 (three to four times that of the average Manhattan therapist),” says the Times. In a chilling interview on Education Update Online [13], Koplewicz says the reason his institute works closely with schools "is simply that’s where the kids are" (bringing to mind Willy Sutton, who robbed banks because "that’s where the money is").
Last month in the Wall Street Journal [14], Koplewicz wrote that "no studies have examined the effect of long-term use" of ADHD meds, but they "have been in use for 70 years, and there is no evidence that suggests any adverse effects." But there has been a large federal study of the long-term effects of the drugs and it shows they are "ineffective over longer periods," and "that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children's growth," reported the Washington Post. [15] Oops.
Other Pediatric Drug Proponents
Only one child in 10,000 has pediatric schizophrenia--some say one in 30,000--but for Pharma it is an untapped market. Symptoms of childhood schizophrenia include "social deficits" and "delusions...related to childhood themes," writes Gabriele Masi, in an article titled "Children with Schizophrenia: Clinical Picture and Pharmacological Treatment," in the journal CNS Drugs. [16] What child doesn't have "social deficits" and "delusions" like imaginary playmates?
Masi has received research funding from Eli Lilly, served as an adviser to the drug company Shire, and been on speakers bureaus for Sanofi Aventis, AstraZeneca, GSK and Janssen, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry [17].
Joining Masi in pursuing pediatric pathology is Joan L. Luby, director of the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In an article in the Archives of General Psychiatry, she alerts the world to the problem of "preschool depression [18]." Researchers used to believe that "young children were too cognitively and emotionally immature to experience depressive effects," says the paper, which was widely picked up the mainstream press, but they now believe preschoolers can and do suffer from major depressive disorder (MDD). "The potential public health importance of identification of preschool MDD is underscored by the established unique efficacy of early intervention during the preschool period," says the article. [19] Translation: Big Pharma can clean up if kids are diagnosed young.
Luby "has received grant/research support from Janssen, has given occasional talks sponsored by AstraZeneca, and has served as a consultant for Shire Pharmaceutical," according to a journal article she co-wrote. [20]
Then there is Mani Pavuluri, a doctor who finds deficiencies of mania and bipolar drugs in tots. "Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) is complex illness with a chronic course, requiring multiple medications over the longitudinal course of illness, with limited recovery and high relapse rate," she wrote in the journal Minerva Pediatrica last year. [21]Pavuluri receives research dollars from GlaxoSmithKline [22] as well as from the National Institutes of Health, aka our tax dollars, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Two features that characterize the pediatric medicine practiced by the NYU Child Study Center, Koplewicz, Mani, Luby and Pavuluri are they term the "diseases" they identify undertreated and underdiagnosed and they urge early treatment when symptoms first appear. (Before the symptoms go away on their own?)
Yet the very fact that such diseases are lifelong conditions is reason to wait to medicate, said Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital at the 2010 American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in New Orleans. [23] Nor can parents with medicated children know if their kids even needed the drugs, since symptoms from the drugs are often called the "disease," says Peter Breggin in a recent interview. [24]
One thing doctors on both sides of the pediatric drug controversy agree on is that the decision to put a child on drugs will likely sentence him or her to a lifetime of medications. What they disagree about is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/how-kids-are-getting-hooked-pills-life
Ann Wright - US Joins Israel in Blockading Education to Students in Gaza
As another international activist ship is on the high seas to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, the United States government has joined with Israel to blockade higher education opportunities for students in Gaza and the West Bank.
Rather than leveraging the large military and economic aid the United States gives the Israeli government each year for the right of Palestinians to accept scholarships and to travel to universities in the West Bank and to universities in other countries, the United States has, with minimal publicity, cancelled 30 scholarships to high school seniors in Gaza and the West Bank.
Two years after the scholarship program was begun in 2010 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem stated that it would not grant the scholarships after Israel said it would not permit students to travel. "Because of the timing and risk of losing funding, available scholarships were awarded to other applicants," it said. "We hope to include Gazan students in future programs."
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Yves Smith - Colleges as Merchants of Debt
Student loan debt slavery is even worse than you probably thought. The Grey Lady tonight has a long, informative story, “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College“, that early on presents the stunning tidbit that 94% of the recipients of bachelor’s degrees borrowed in order to pay for it. The Times doesn’t report what average debt levels are in this cohort, but the average across all borrowers, per the New York Fed, is $23,000. Remember, this total includes graduates who have have been paying down debt, meaning they’ve amortized principal and almost certainly had borrowed less on average to complete school.
Contrast this “certain to be higher on average than $23,000″ for new graduates with their earning power, or more accurately, lack thereof. The Times article also mentions a Rutgers survey which seems to have some sample bias or underreporting of borrowing (of 2006-2011 graduates, only 55% of the respondents said they had borrowed to help fund college, and the median reported debt level was $20,000). The 2009-2011 graduates’ income averaged $27,000. In addition, only half said that their job required a college degree.
This juxtaposition confirms that colleges, like the financial services industry, have become increasingly extractive: whatever financial benefits accrue to getting an undergraduate education, they are more and more captured by the schools, though their ability to persuade students to go into hock to get a degree. And like late housing bubble borrowers, more are defaulting early on, meaning the loans were badly underwritten (ie, many should probably have never been made because it the odds of default were high):
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Ranking Reveals World's Top Countries for Higher Education
New research into national education systems gives the first ranking of countries which are the 'best' at providing higher education.
The Universitas 21 Ranking was announced May 11, 2012 at an event at Lund University in Sweden. Universitas 21, a leading global network of research universities, has developed the ranking as a benchmark for governments, education institutions and individuals. It aims to highlight the importance of creating a strong environment for higher education institutions to contribute to economic and cultural development, provide a high-quality experience for students and help institutions compete for overseas applicants.
Research authors at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research,University of Melbourne, looked at the most recent data from 48 countries across 20 different measures. The range of measures is grouped under four headings: resources (investment by government and private sector), output (research and its impact, as well as the production of an educated workforce which meets labour market needs), connectivity (international networks and collaboration which protects a system against insularity) and environment (government policy and regulation, diversity and participation opportunities). Population size is accounted for in the calculations.
Overall, in the Universitas 21 Ranking of higher education systems, the top five were found to be the United States, Sweden, Canada, Finland and Denmark.
Government funding of higher education as a percentage of GDP is highest in Finland, Norway and Denmark, but when private expenditure is added in, funding is highest in the United States, Korea, Canada and Chile. Investment in Research and Development is highest in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. The United States dominates the total output of research journal articles, but Sweden is the biggest producer of articles per head of population. The nations whose research has the greatest impact are Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, United Kingdom and Denmark. While the United States and United Kingdom have the world's top institutions in rankings, the depth of world class higher education institutions per head of population is best in Switzerland, Sweden, Israel and Denmark.
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez - Welcome to the Knowledge Factory
The lead article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education Review is titled “The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps.”
More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010, part of “an often overlooked, and growing, subgroup of Ph.D. recipients, adjunct professors, and other Americans with advanced degrees who have had to apply for food stamps or some other form of government aid since late 2007.
“Some are struggling to pay back student loans and cover basic living expenses as they submit scores of applications for a limited pool of full-time academic positions. Others are trying to raise families or pay for their children’s college expenses on the low and fluctuating pay they receive as professors off the tenure track, a group that now makes up 70 percent of faculties. Many bounce on and off unemployment or welfare during semester breaks. And some adjuncts have found themselves trying to make ends meet by waiting tables or bagging groceries alongside their students.”
And the numbers of impoverished Ph.D.s may actually be much higher than this.
“Leaders of organizations that represent adjunct faculty members think that the number of people counted by the government does not represent the full picture of academics on welfare because many do not report their reliance on federal aid.
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Tom Philpott - How Your College Is Selling Out to Big Ag
Last week, the University of Illinois' College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) in Champaign-Urbana made a momentous announcement: it has accepted a $250,000 grant from genetically modified seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto to create an endowed chair for the "Agricultural Communications Program" it runs with the College of Communications.
The university's press release [1] quotes Monsanto's vice president of technology communications giving a taste of its vision for the investment:
With the population expecting to reach 9 billion by 2030, farmers from Illinois and beyond will be asked to produce more crops while using fewer resources. At Monsanto we are committed to bringing farmers advanced ag technologies to help them meet this challenge. Effectively communicating farmers’ efforts to feed, clothe and fuel a rapidly growing population is a major part of the solution.
A cynic might translate that statemenpt this way: In order to maintain highly profitable and hotly contested [2] business model, we'll need a new generation of PR professionals to construct and disseminate our marketing message.
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http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/how-agribusiness-dominates-public-ag-research
Dean Baker - Everyone Agrees That the Decline in Private Sector Pay Has Been Understated
Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs have a piece [1] saying that many public sector workers are overpaid in which they also say that I agree with them in much of their analysis. This is true.
Let me outline what I think are areas of agreement. First, we seem to agree that if we just compare the straight wages paid to public sector and private sector workers, the latter do better. When we adjust for education and experience, private sector workers tend to get higher pay than their counterparts in the public sector.
This is not true across the board. My colleague John Schmitt has found that while workers with college and advanced degrees (e.g. doctors and lawyers) get less in the public sector, less educated workers get paid the same or slightly more [2] than their counterparts in the private sector. In other words, there is less inequality in public sector wages than we see in the private sector, with the average being somewhat lower.
We also agree that the lower wages for public sector workers are largely or completely offset by higher benefits. The key difference here is that public sector workers are far more likely to have a traditional defined benefit pension plan. Most workers in the public sector still have defined benefit pensions, while less than 20 percent of workers in the private sector do. (The difference is considerably less stark if we restrict the comparison to large private firms, where defined benefit plans are still common.)
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Margaret Austin Smith - Undergrads May Fail Critical-Thinking Test, but Academia Is Failing Them
The two professors sat in front of me, making conversation before the talk. The speaker's title slide already projected on the wall ahead: "What (if anything) are undergraduates learning during college?" The professors laughed at just how apt they thought the title was: "Isn't that right?" "Yes, anything, please!" And then the more senior faculty member, a woman, returned with a comment that made her junior colleague bristle: "Especially the boys. Some of those boys just try to get by with the minimum possible." The junior colleague sat silent, and then spoke with a sharpness that spiked into the buoyant mood of moments before: "Well, that was me in high school. But the thing is, I was just bored to tears." His senior colleague stopped chuckling to nod knowingly.
The slides belonged to Josipa Roksa, a co-author with Richard Arum of the 2011 sociology/media sensation "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" and of its 2012 follow-up report, "Documenting Uncertain Times: Post-graduate Transitions of the Academically Adrift Cohort."The premise of the talk, as well as the premise of the book and its sequel, was that undergraduate students are not improving their critical thinking skills in college, that this claim is sustained by the failure of a putatively representative sample of 2,362 students at 24 four-year institutions to increase their average score on standardized tests of critical thinking, and that this failure in critical thinking is affecting them negatively in the labor market and in civil society (as indicated by the percentage with full-time employment or graduate or professional school status, and by self-reported newspaper-reading habits).
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