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Hawkma and former flame ride the wings of love
The latest in New York City hawk drama: Lola, one member of the red-tail hawk power couple, has flown the coop. Meanwhile Pale Male is canoodling with a younger chick. We trust Hawkma’s soaring above all the scandal. (NYPost)
Whoah! We beat Cornell?! Major Kudos to men’s B-ball. (Spec)
Apparently we’re “academically adrift.” In a new study, social scientists prove that most college students learn virtually nothing—display no improvement “in critical thinking and complex reasoning”—after 2 years of school. Columbia Sociology Prof, Shamus Khan, responds ominously in GOOD Magazine: “College is a place where already advantaged youths spend four years enjoying themselves, and upon completion, they receive considerable rewards for having done almost nothing.” Basically, he argues, we’re not working (our leisure time has increased) and we’re not learning, so what are we doing here besides putting our already rich selves in a position to make more money later in life? Still, Khan doesn’t think his efforts as a professor are totally futile, but “it won’t be long before the effects of no work, all play and a little learning are keenly felt by our society.” Womp womp. On an unrelated note, he has a Twitter! (CityRoom)
In honor of your return, check out NY Mag’s “The Greatest New York Ever,” a compilation of the greatest New York year, musical, mayor, TV show athlete, building, novel, film, song… you get the point. Welcome back to the city that celebrates itself like no other! We missed you, friends. (NYMag)
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@Geez... ..his Twitter is such a downer.
@anonymous haha he looks like such a creeper:
http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/fac-bios/khan/faculty.html
@poop At the risk of sounding like an idealist, I have worked and learned a lot while here. A lot more than I did in high school, and likely a lot more than at most other universities in the US, at least the ones I have indirect experiences with.
I don’t think Columbia wholly represents the college experience this study suggests. Sure it’s a privilege, and sure we’re privileged to be here, but I don’t think we’re just at a daycare center.
@poop and hopefully to back up my assertion (see, I’m thinking critically!)
For example, they found that 32 percent of the students whom they followed did not, in a typical semester, take “any courses with more than 40 pages of reading per week” and that 50 percent “did not take a single course in which they wrote more than 20 pages over the course of the semester.”
You won’t get off that easy going here, unless you work just as hard to avoid doing work.
@Agreed A sociology professor would complain that students aren’t writing enough. I’m pretty sure math/science/SEAS kids are doing plenty of work and learning a lot.
@hmm I think it’s possible that our fundamental critical thinking capabilities don’t improve. Some of those capabilities, after all, are physiologically determined anyway, and probably can’t be much improved by any effort– and much of whatever can be improved with effort at some point probably can’t be improved any more after the brain reaches physiological maturity. But that doesn’t mean that college students don’t work, or that some of them (such as those here) don’t learn a considerable amount– of valuable information.
@Correction “our leisure time has INCREASED by almost half”
@David Thanks for pointing that out! It’s fixed.