Every semester, I pose a question to my students: Why are you here? Would you prioritize deep learning, even if it meant a lower grade, or chase the highest grade, even at the cost of true understanding? They almost always claim learning matters most. But I’m growing skeptical that they actually mean it. Those words […]
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I flatter myself that I’m a pretty good teacher. I’ve been doing it for 40 years, so it stands to reason I’ve developed some skill. Ratings and comments from students tend to bear this out. They occasionally complain that I talk too much—probably true—or that I’m a “tough grader”—doubtful—but for the most part, my student […]
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I haven’t read Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, and frankly, I’m not sure that I want to. Having had high expectations of other widely touted books on higher education—most recently, Hacker and Dreifus’s Higher Education?, Martha Nussbaum’s Not For Profit, Mark Taylor’s Crisis on Campus—and having been sadly […]
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