Aspiring Adults Adrift

Few books have ever made their presence felt on college campuses—and newspaper opinion pages—as quickly and thoroughly as Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s 2011 landmark study of undergraduates’ learning, socialization, and study habits, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. From the moment it was published, one thing was clear: no university could afford to ignore its well-documented and disturbing findings about the failings of undergraduate education. Now Arum and Roksa are back, and their new book follows the same cohort of undergraduates through the rest of their college careers and out into the working world. Built on interviews and detailed surveys of almost a thousand recent college graduates from a diverse range of colleges and universities, Aspiring Adults Adrift reveals a generation facing a difficult transition to adulthood. Recent graduates report trouble finding decent jobs and developing stable romantic relationships, as well as assuming civic and financial responsibility—yet at the same time, they remain surprisingly hopeful and upbeat about their prospects. Analyzing these findings in light of students’ performance on standardized tests of general collegiate skills, selectivity of institutions attended, and choice of major, Arum and Roksa not only map out the current state of a generation too often adrift, but enable us to examine the relationship between college experiences and tentative transitions to adulthood. Sure to be widely discussed, Aspiring Adults Adrift will compel us once again to re-examine the aims, approaches, and achievements of higher education.

Few books have ever made their presence felt on college campuses and newspaper opinion pages as quickly and thoroughly as Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa s 2011 landmark study of undergraduates learning, socialization, and study habits, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses." From the moment it was published, one thing was clear: no university could afford to ignore its well-documented and disturbing findings about the failings of undergraduate education. Now Arum and Roksa are back, and their new book follows the same cohort of undergraduates through the rest of their college careers and out into the working world. Built on interviews and detailed surveys of almost a thousand recent college graduates from a diverse range of colleges and universities, "Aspiring Adults Adrift" reveals a generation facing a difficult transition to adulthood. Recent graduates report trouble finding decent jobs and developing stable romantic relationships, as well as assuming civic and financial responsibility yet at the same time, they remain surprisingly hopeful and upbeat about their prospects. Analyzing these findings in light of students performance on standardized tests of general collegiate skills, selectivity of institutions attended, and choice of major, Arum and Roksa not only map out the current state of a generation too often adrift, but enable us to examine the relationship between college experiences and tentative transitions to adulthood. Sure to be widely discussed, "Aspiring Adults Adrift" will compel us once again to re-examine the aims, approaches, and achievements of higher education. "

"Built on interviews and detailed surveys of almost a thousand recent college graduates from a diverse range of colleges and universities, Aspiring Adults Adrift reveals a generation facing a difficult transition to adulthood. Recent graduates report trouble in finding decent jobs and developing stable romantic relationships, as well as in assuming civic and financial responsibility--yet at the same time, they remain surprisingly hopeful and upbeat about their prospects. ... Analyzing these findings in light of students' performance on standardized tests of general collegiate skills, the selectivity of institutions they attended, and their choice of major, Arum and Roksa not only map out the current state of a generation too often adrift, but enable us to examine the relationship between college experiences and tentative transitions to adulthood"--Back cover.

This comprehensive reader in the sociology of education examines important topics and exposes students to examples of sociological research on schools. Drawing from classic and contemporary scholarship, the editors have chosen readings that examine current issues and reflect diverse theoretical approaches to studying the effects of schooling on individuals and society.

In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

“Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife,” wrote John Dewey in his classic work The School and Society. In School, Society, and State, Tracy Steffes places that idea at the center of her exploration of the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940. American public schooling, Steffes shows, was not merely another reform project of the Progressive Era, but a central one. She addresses why Americans invested in public education and explains how an array of reformers subtly transformed schooling into a tool of social governance to address the consequences of industrialization and urbanization. By extending the reach of schools, broadening their mandate, and expanding their authority over the well-being of children, the state assumed a defining role in the education—and in the lives—of American families. In School, Society, and State, Steffes returns the state to the study of the history of education and brings the schools back into our discussion of state power during a pivotal moment in American political development.

Higher education today faces a host of challenges, from quality to cost. But too little attention gets paid to a startling fact: four out of ten students -- that's more than ten percent of the entire population - -who start college drop out. The situation is particularly dire for black and Latino students, those from poor families, and those who are first in their families to attend college. In The College Dropout Scandal, David Kirp outlines the scale of the problem and shows that it's fixable - -we already have the tools to boost graduation rates and shrink the achievement gap. Many college administrators know what has to be done, but many of them are not doing the job - -the dropout rate hasn't decreased for decades. It's not elite schools like Harvard or Williams who are setting the example, but places like City University of New York and Long Beach State, which are doing the hard work to assure that more students have a better education and a diploma. As in his New York Times columns, Kirp relies on vivid, on-the-ground reporting, conversations with campus leaders, faculty and students, as well as cogent overviews of cutting-edge research to identify the institutional reforms--like using big data to quickly identify at-risk students and get them the support they need -- and the behavioral strategies -- from nudges to mindset changes - -that have been proven to work. Through engaging stories that shine a light on an underappreciated problem in colleges today, David Kirp's hopeful book will prompt colleges to make student success a top priority and push more students across the finish line, keeping their hopes of achieving the American Dream alive.