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.

Comments

Almost

[s.petry]

I believe the better generalization would be that Colleges are teaching students "What" to think, and not "How" to think. Since cognitive dissonance is painful, and it feels good to belong to something you believe is important, it's easy to get people to go along with the game.

When you consider that the people with political power on the left are pushing for more "free" college the prospect 10 years down the road could look much worse.

Fail to improve is radically different than fail.

[gurps_npc]

The article I read did not give enough specifics (I skipped the paywall one).

So you can't tell if a good school merely failed to improve rather than had their students fail.

Everyone should have critical thinking skills, and if you don't have any, then college should teach you that skill. But that is NOT the only thing a college should teach. Once you have that skill, there are many other skills you need, from pure knowledge, to creativity, to social skills (beyond drinking), pattern recognition, basic computer usage, among other things.

In particular, I would be SHOCKED if Ivy league schools showed significant improvement in critical thinking. It's exactly the kind of thing they love their incoming students to already have, and the ivy league schools have gotten so selective that they can pick the students that already have that.