Good teaching and exposure to students from diverse backgrounds are some of the strongest predictors of whether freshmen return for a second year of college and improve their critical-thinking skills, say two prominent researchers.
Patrick T. Terenzini, a professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University, and Ernest T. Pascarella, a co-director of the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa, spoke to an audience of chief academic and fund-raising officers convened by the Council of Independent Colleges here on Sunday.
The two men are co-authors of a highly influential book, How College Affects Students, and they sought on Sunday to synthesize what recent research says about student learning, while also weighing in on recent controversies in higher-education research.
Mr. Pascarella based his observations on the findings from the first year of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, which followed thousands of students at 19 liberal-arts colleges. It recorded the background information of entering freshmen, asked them about their experiences, recorded their outcomes after their first year, and collected the same information again after their fourth year.
Good teaching was not defined by test results. Instead, its attributes were identified on a nine-item scale, which included student appraisals of how well the teacher organized material, used class time, explained directions, and reviewed the subject matter. [emphasis mine]
The likelihood that freshmen returned to college for their sophomore year increased 30 percent when students observed those teaching practices in the classroom. And it held true even after controlling for their backgrounds and grades. "These are learnable skills that faculty can pick up," Mr. Pascarella said.
I decided to complete my undergraduate educationat Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college, in no small part because I wanted to have a relationship with my professors. I spent a semester at Michigan State University as an adult education student between my time at Naropa University and Lawrence, and for the first time encountered a lecture hall larger than a most movie theaters when I enrolled into Psychology 101. The first time I saw my professor face to face was when he passed out the first test. I quickly dropped partially due to the size, and partially because I soon realized that the professor did not want to waste his time interacting with undergrads
After that experience, Lawrence's very low 9 to 1 student/faculty ratio looked attractive, and I think I am a better student because of it. Except in one case, which was a large Art History course with the lights always dimmed, every professor I had during my three years at Lawrence knew my name by the end of the first week. And the overwhelming majority of them cared about my education. For example, my statistics professor knew I took his class because I needed a "Q," or quantitative, class to graduate, and took the class as Pass/Fail. As long as I scored above a C-, I was happy. He realized that was my goal, helped me as much as he can, and even elucidated some statistical concepts I was more interested in for personal reasons. And he did this for a me, a student who was not his golden boy prodigy or even interested in his field, because he valued the educational process.
If the Penn State study shows anything, its that if an educational institution wants to keep a higher retention rate, that investing in quality educators over overworked and poorly paid Adjunct Faculty (and overpaid Administrators) is well worth the cost. It has both the tangible benefit of raising retention rates and the intangible benefit of giving the student a better education. Unfortunately, since state governments are higher education budgets like a tweaker-cum-butcher, I doubt higher education will change any time soon.
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