Posted on 09/19/2007 6:50:14 AM PDT by petercooper
Students Know Less After 4 College Years
Harvard Gets D+ on Civics Quiz
By ANNIE KARNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 19, 2007
Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.
According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade.
"At the most expensive colleges, they actually graduate knowing less," the executive director of the Jack Miller Center at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Michael Ratliff, said. "Colleges and universities are not directing students to the courses that would educate them. We want to know whether after getting $300 billion to do their work, universities are actually educating their students."
At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because "the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little."
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Not.
Surprising.
Rankings
NO COLLEGE EARNED BETTER THAN A “D+”
Rank College Mean Senior Score (2006) (% correct)
1. Harvard University 69.56%
2. Grove City College (PA) 67.26
3. Washington & Lee University (VA) 66.98
4. Yale University 65.85
5. Brown University 65.64
6. University of Virginia 65.28
7. Wheaton College (IL) 64.98
8. University of Pennsylvania 63.49
9. Duke University 63.41
10. Bowdoin College (ME) 62.86
11. Princeton University 61.90
12. University of Notre Dame 61.25
13. Rhodes College (TN) 61.18
14. Smith College (MA) 60.07
15. University of Rochester (NY)* 59.32
16. University of Wisconsin 57.87
17. University of Georgia* 57.76
18. University of North Carolina 57.68
19. Cornell University 56.95
20. Carnegie Mellon University* 56.90
21. Calvin College (MI) 56.45
22. University of California-Berkeley 56.27
23. University of Washington 55.88
24. Concordia University (NE)* 55.28
25. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities* 53.50
26. University of Florida 53.40
27. Iowa State University* 52.69
28. University of Montana* 52.16
29. Gonzaga University (WA) 51.86
30. University of Michigan 51.00
31. Illinois State University* 50.93
32. Mississippi State University* 50.86
33. Rutgers University* 49.99
34. George Mason University (VA) 49.96
35. Murray State University (KY)* 49.75
36. University of Mississippi 49.32
37. IdahoState University* 48.15
38. University of Massachusetts-Amherst* 46.66
39. Mount Vernon Nazarene University (OH)* 44.60
40. Pfeiffer University (NC)* 44.30
41. St. Cloud State University (MN)* 44.26
42. Texas State University-San Marcos* 43.99
43. Georgia College and State University* 43.68
44. University of Southern Maine* 43.58
45. Marian College (WI)* 43.10
46. Texas A&M International University* 41.14
47. Eastern Connecticut State University* 40.99
48. St. John’s University (NY)* 39.82
49. Oakwood College (AL)* 34.69
50. St. Thomas University (FL)* 32.50
* Randomly selected school
oops- Thanks
They send you off to college,
Try to gain a little knowledge,
But all you want to do is learn how to score.
-Jimmy Buffet
Alert!!!! The sun rose in the East this morning!!!!!
Families all over the country are going into debt to fund these left wing machines that used to be great Universities. They are running on fumes and the remnants of thier reputation.
Toga! Toga! Toga!
No joke- I was in an ice cream shop in the NE recently- I heard the girl behind the counter mutter to her co-worker— “and I paid $23,000 a yr for that school”. Maybe she got a degree in “Women’s Studies” or something
I learned how to do this in the Navy. Than I quit serious drinking in 87.
“Seven years of college down the drain.”
I say it depends on the parents. Right now, we - my wife and I - are telling are grandsons that what they teach in the public schools and college is next to nothing considering what you can learn on your own. We have also warned them of the liberal bias.
The only thing colleges are good for now is football.
Thanks for posting this!
Who'd a-thunk it??
And providing work for foreign TAs who can't even speak understandable English.
well if it makes any difference when I took a fairly high level management class I managed to ace it hardly looking at my book. Reason being I’ve spent two years in retail and have already learned more about management than most of my professors.
The game was played in pairs like the Pyramid. One of the celebrities with Jeanne Kirkpatrick (Nora Dunn ... yada yada yada) who slowly became frustrated with being "wrong" repeatedly.
I had my son who’s a college senior at a state U take it and he did okay (around 88 percent.) But I think some of the questions are typical of many college tests, poorly worded and somewhat ambiguous.
Business law seems to have been one of the courses that helped him with the court decision questions.
He’s a senior, the last Am. Govt. class he took was in his freshman year to satisfy general requirements. In the last two years his courses have concentrated on his major (which is not a liberal arts major) and have been technical in nature.
I actually think, we as adults, would score better than students because the truth is, the longer one lives, the more knowledge one “usually” retains.
No regrets here! I warned her. :)
I watched him turn into a narrow minded obnoxious blow hard liberal
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
No... He is NOT a liberal.
He was turned into a Marxist and/or a Useful Dimwit.
We must stop using the words liberal, progressive, left, socialist, etc. We are in a philosophical civil war with Marxism. Our government K-12 schools and our colleges and universities are the Marxists most important and powerful weapon against freedom.
We can survive a nuclear suit case bomb, but we will not survive if the Marxists succeed in indoctrinating the next generation of voters.
It **IS** that serious!
She is a smart girl!
If they are taught there is a wall of separation between church and state, the USA is a democracy, there is a right to privacy, and so on, naturally a real civics test would trip them up.
They don’t even teach who the first president was.
It seems that students from the University of Chicago were not tested this year.
On FNC this morning there was a journalism major Senior interviewed over the phone re the clown who got himself tazed by “bro” at the Kerry event. She sounded more like a 7th grader to me.....could not speak a complete sentence or thought, or even a word with more than 3 syllables.....a Senior year journalist-wannabe!
I scored 77%. I’m not feeling all that bright right about now.
The only thing colleges are good for now is football.This is why colleges can't be run like a business. Why do you think colleges place so much emphasis on their football teams and foreign TAs? $$$$$ and lots of it. The football program at a large R1 university(i.e. a big state school) brings in astronomical amounts of cash for the University. So do the grants the non English speaking TAs(since they actually worked hard in college).
And providing work for foreign TAs who can't even speak understandable English.
The headline, and comments by people who only read the headline, seem to imply that students have less knowledge overall, or are less intelligent, than when they entered a four-year school. The survey does not support those claims.
I got a 95% on the test, for those who are interested.
I took that test and scored an embarrassing 68.3%. I graduated high school in 1973 with only a few college credits since. However current Harvard grads beat me by less than one percentage point and they ranked highest of universities in the same test.
“On FNC this morning there was a journalism major Senior interviewed over the phone re the clown who got himself tazed by “bro” at the Kerry event. She sounded more like a 7th grader to me.....could not speak a complete sentence or thought, or even a word with more than 3 syllables.....a Senior year journalist-wannabe!”
I deal with that every day, in the workforce, people with MBAs and get paid in the high 5-6 figures, who do not have a basic understanding of the English language. They either have admins clean up their gibberish, or simply don’t care.
How many times did she say “um” and “I mean”?
Long test, but worth it to know what you might know. ;)
Tough fair questions.
That can be explained away very easily. As a freshman you're main concern is not getting thrown out of Yale or Princeton after working hard your whole life to get there. As a senior, you don't give a dang anymore cuz you know that pretty soon you'll be adding "BS Duke University" on your resume.
They send you off to college
To gain a little knowledge
But all you want to do
Is learn how to score...Jimmy Buffett “Pencil Thin Mustache”
Let’s be fair. As I always seem to offend people with this comment I’m going to give you fair warning. If you have a degree in something other than the sciences plese do not read this post further. Doing so may cause offense.
That said, most arts programs are indoctrination programs more than anything else. Thankfully in Engineering we don’t get the chance to be lumped in with the masses in “how to be a good little liberal 101.” The other science programs do have more flexibility in their schedules so I can see where they would get more of it.
The point is, higher learning should not be used to teach “life lessons” rather it should be used to educate those who are willing to learn. Too many people take higher education for granted. This is another consequence of losing the manufacturing base. There aren’t enough manufacturing jobs to support the masses, so they go to college in order to be educated beyond their intelligence.
How many times did she say “um” and “I mean”?
30 percent/s :)
IT seems obvious to the casual observer that the current tenure system is another dinosaur waiting to exhale.
I scored 85% too, I’m disappointed, but then I realize I really didn’t learn a lot of that stuff in college, I learned it on my own, outside of my studies.
Which is kind of my point, you should only expect at most 50% of your knowledge to come from formal studies, and the rest from your own initiative.
Where did you go to school?
One of my grandsons, who got fed up with the liberal/Che G. admiring teachers, etc., left the gov't (some still call them public) school system and proceeded on his own with an on-line High School and spending hours each day at the public library. Indeed, he became so popular at the library that they turned over a sunny, third floor room with table to him for his private use.
At 18, he moved to Houston, took a year of college and then enlisted. He is now a "Sky Soldier" = Airborne Task Force = in Afghanistan - and in his spare time, catching up on the classics.
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