Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Browne, Margo Novak

Titel

We're losing our minds: Rethinking American higher education

Ist Teil von

• The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 2013, Vol.43 (3), p.98

Ort / Verlag

Toronto: Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Free E-Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The authors lay out, chapter by chapter, what higher education is now and their vi- sion of what it could be. Chapter 1 deals with an overview of the current climate, whereby success should not be judged by magazine rankings but by student learning. This learn- ing, the authors suggest, should be cross-disciplinary and transformative, rather than the "banking" method of education that is found in classrooms and the notion of the student as consumer and a degree as commodity. Chapter 2 explores college quality, how today's undergraduate is scraping by without doing much at all, with employers bemoaning that new graduates are not "workplace ready." A culture focused on learning could change this, but currently neither college rankings nor grades provide evidence of learning, and there is not enough formative assessment since many professors mainly use summative assessment methods. Chapters 3 and 4 take a detailed look into learning by focusing on development and neuroscience. As "society can no longer assume that a college graduate will be broadly educated, trustworthy, and ready for a life of learning and civic and global engagement" (p. 67) and as colleges lose up to half of their freshman class by senior year, [Richard Keeling] and [Richard Hersh] detail the enormous importance of holistic, relevant, challenging learning and the importance of the quality and quantity of interactions with other students, professors, academic advisers, and others in the university community. Furthermore, since learn- ing makes changes in the composition and structure of the brain, a multitude of experi- ences and interactions with others and the environment are crucial to creating unique knowledge. The "crisis" in education is that these things are simply not happening often enough and it is leading to a weak higher educational system, not to mention shortchang- ing graduates the opportunity to engage with and create knowledge.