Is college worth it? In part, that’s up to students

As college graduates facing barren job markets, many are wondering if getting a degree was worth the time and effort, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa write in the Los Angeles Times. And in fact, many come away with “only limited improvement in the skills necessary to be successful in today’s knowledge-based economy.”

Arum and Roksa, professors at New York University and the University of Virginia respectively, tracked thousands of students through more than two dozen colleges and universities and found “consistent evidence that many students were not being appropriately challenged.” 

Part of that is because courses are too easy: “In a typical semester, 50% of students did not take a single course requiring more than 20 pages of writing, 32% did not have any classes that required reading more than 40 pages per week, and 36% reported studying alone five or fewer hours per week.”

Students who push themselves can find challenging programs, the authors say. At many schools, however, “students can choose from a menu of easy programs and classes that allow them to graduate without having received a rigorous college education.”

“Improvement in thinking and writing skills requires academic engagement; simply hanging out on a college campus for multiple years isn’t enough,” they write.