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Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills: WSJ (wsj.com)
Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging. From a report: At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table (Editor's note: the link might be paywalled; alternative source), The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years. Some of the biggest gains occur at smaller colleges where students are less accomplished at arrival but soak up a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum.
Just understanding the laws of physics gives any STEM grad a huge advantage over a liberal arts students in bullshit detection.
Because those physicists who search for elusive particles and then say, "Isn't God grand?" aren't spewing bullshit.
Critical thinking in liberal arts schools is just another indoctrination. Test is how well they agree with the teachers opinions.
Except the opposite is true. Those who graduate from liberal arts schools, on the whole, have better critical thinking skills than do those who graduate from professional or vocational schools. You'll note this study is from 2011.
From a few years ago: the survey reveals that 74 percent of business and nonprofit leaders say they would recommend a twenty-first century liberal education to a young person they know in order to prepare for long-term professional success in today's global economy.
A bit more recent: DePauw University President Brian Casey recently argued in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that liberal arts graduates have the creativity and critical thinking skills that today's employers need.
When managers and employers are asked to identify what traits they want in employees, "without fail they almost perfectly describe liberal-arts graduates," says Casey. "They want people who are creative, who can deal with complexity, who can think for themselves, [and] work with other folks," he adds.
And finally, from August of last year: Experts agree that technical skills can be taught much more easily than soft skills. If you have workers with great communication, negotiation and interpersonal skills, hold onto them. "You can have the best technology and processes in the world, but if your people aren't able to communicate about them, if they aren't effectively demonstrating teamwork, critical thinking and emotional intelligence, it doesn't help your business succeed," King says.
Those kinds of skills always have been emphasized in liberal arts education, and nowadays even technology-focused programs and institutions are integrating these tenets into their curriculum, says PK Agarwal, CEO and regional Dean, Northeastern University Silicon Valley (NUSV).
Sooo, speaking of bullshit detector.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, wrote a neat book called Wealth of Nations, and he included an appendix where he explains why higher education does not follow the supply/demand model and can't reasonably be capitalist.
It boils down to, nobody shops around and buys a slightly lower quality education than they think they can afford; everybody buys the education with the strongest reputation that they can afford, and so there is no price feedback. The cost is related to reputation rather than value, so the units don't even translate directly to Capital.