Aimless, Misled and in Debt

Aimless, Misled and in Debt Updated May 25, 2011, 01:39 AM
New York Times
Richard Arum is professor of sociology and education at New York University and co-author of "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses."

Current research tracking the fate of newly minted college graduates has now repeatedly demonstrated that large numbers are experiencing very difficult adult transitions. School-to-work transitions in the U.S. have always been comparatively difficult because the institutional ties between firms and schools are relatively weak; and much of a student’s educational preparation does not focus on occupationally specific skills.

Colleges typically have abandoned responsibility for developing the attitudes and abilities necessary for adult success.

There are many advantages to this loose coupling between education and work, but the consequences for student labor market transitions have long been clear [...] for many college graduates. Young adult years are typically filled with many false starts, job shifts and extended periods of under-employment. Given current economic conditions, it is not surprising that many graduates today are experiencing pronounced and acute difficulties trying to make these transitions.

But this in no way implies that nothing is new about the phenomenon nor that colleges are not implicated in these outcomes.

First, the amount of indebtedness many graduates have is pronounced and unprecedented.

Second, young adults today as a group are highly motivated, but often directionless. The sociologists Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson have astutely described recent cohorts as “drifting dreamers” with “high ambitions, but no clear life plan for reaching them.” Indeed, more than a third of college graduates in our study reported that they aspired to own their own businesses, even though there was little evidence that entrepreneurial skills were being developed.

Many colleges and universities are implicated in the difficulties that graduates are facing, since not only did they fail to ensure that college students experienced rigorous academic coursework associated with the development of higher order cognitive skills, but, more troubling, they typically have abandoned responsibility for shaping and developing the attitudes and dispositions necessary for adult success.

In my research with Josipa Roksa, more than a third of students reported studying alone less than five hours per week, but these students were able to graduate on-time and with high grades [JB - my highlight]. If students have learned in higher education that success was possible with such little effort, colleges have done them a great disservice. Career, family and community achievements are not so easily attained.

Evidence that a deeper problem is at play here – one that cannot simply be dismissed with reference to “rites of passage” or current economic cycles – is suggested by examining college graduates’ non-economic behavior in areas where one would expect to observe individuals assuming adult responsibility.

Josipa Roksa and I have found that 30 percent of individuals in our study reported a year after graduating from college that they read the newspaper (in print or online) either monthly or never [JB-my highlight]. Regardless of whether young adults can any longer find employment listings from perusing such outlets, as a democratic society we will likely not be able to confront and overcome our country's difficult challenges with an educated class that fails to even bother regularly consulting a newspaper.

It might not be reasonable to expect recent college graduates to be gainfully employed, but we should be able to expect them to read about the world around them and to think critically and in complex ways about the political rhetoric they hear, the information they encounter, and the economic, political and social problems that we collectively face. If graduates are not doing that, colleges should share some of the blame.