Academically Adrift Statistics

You would think that after all the money, exams, and paperwork you go through to get accepted and to take classes at a university would pay off in the end, right? All the time and money invested into college, the supposed epitome of education, the supposed equalizer of minorities' systematic disadvantages. Unfortunately, as Arum and Roksa explain with data from their studies in Academically Adrift this is simply not the case. Not only are university students experiencing little to no growth in learning, as demonstrated by critical thinking skills and the like, but minorities' differences in learning stay the same, or are even exacerbated, in college.

Something is definitely wrong with an educational system which fosters academically adrift students whom feel obliged to go to college but have no way to reach their end goal, or an end goal at all for that matter, in mind. What irked me the most was how college is supposed to be the institution where the playing fields are somewhat leveled, to account for discrimination and disadvantages minorities and working class people face, but that it only perpetuated the inequality. Inequality is especially perpetuated by standard examination prep courses that prepare the upper class people way better for future academic endeavors than the working class or even middle class people.

At the end of the day, the United States higher education system is greatly lagging behind that of other countries and the intimidating thought is, although we were the main pioneers of higher education, others are catching up to us as demonstrated by a quote that put this situation into perspective in terms of the United States' economy.

“We may still have more than our share of the world’s best universities. But a lot of other countries have followed our lead, and they are now educating more of their citizens to more advanced levels than we are,” the recent federal report A Test of Leadership observed. “Worse, they are passing us by at a time when education is more important to our collective prosperity than ever.”

Thus, even though we may have been ahead of the higher education game at one point, we are now slacking when it  counts more than ever and this will ultimately be detrimental to our economy and citizens both of which will eventually get left behind.