Making college matter

[...] many others come to college with too little appreciation for the vast opportunities before them, gloss over foundational curricular requirements as merely hurdles to be cleared, show far too little drive in developing a plan to make the most of their educations and focus too heavily on the party scene.

Analyzing data from a study of more than two dozen institutions, sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa conclude that many students “enter college with attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors that are often at odds with academic commitment.”

When sociologist Mary Grigsby interviewed scores of undergraduates at a large midwestern university, many students echoed the words of one who told her:

To take responsibility for their own learning, students need to move past what psychologist David Perkins has called possessive and performative understandings of knowledge, where learning is about acquiring new facts or demonstrating expertise in classroom settings.

When scholars asked graduates at Hamilton College to think back on their undergraduate years, these alumni pointed to specific individuals (often professors, coaches or classmates) who shaped their paths.

Finding friends and cohort groups can be reassuring, but scholars have found that students who interact frequently with peers who are different in significant ways (racially, ethnically, religiously, socioeconomically and so on) show more intellectual and social growth in college than those who don’t.

A large 2014 survey by Gallup and Purdue University revealed that college graduates who believed they had a professor who (1) cared about them as individuals, (2) made them excited about learning and (3) encouraged them to pursue their dreams reported being far happier and more successful than their peers years after graduation.

A recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Levine Scholars Program, a prestigious scholarship for academically talented students interested in civic engagement, told us how the mentoring of sociologist Diane Zablotsky transformed her view of herself:

[...] Ashley Finley and Tia Brown McNair, scholars at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, have shown that high-impact educational experiences like internships, undergraduate research, capstone courses and study abroad have particularly positive outcomes for students who traditionally have been underserved in American higher education.

A study at the University of California, Davis reinforces this finding by demonstrating that engaging in mentored undergraduate research beyond the typical requirements for biology courses is particularly significant in preparing African-American undergraduates to successfully pursue graduate study and careers in the sciences.

Results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) also show that institutional prestige and financial resources do not determine the quality of student opportunities: