After becoming president of Purdue University in 2013, Mitch Daniels asked the faculty to prove that their students have actually achieved one of higher education’s most important goals: critical thinking skills. Two years before, a nationwide study of college graduates had shown that more than a third had made no 26_____ gains in such mental abilities during their school years. Mr. Daniels, needed to 27_____ the high cost of attending Purdue to its students and their families. After all, the percentage of Americans who say a college degree is “very important” has fallen 28_____ in the last 5-6 years.
Purdue now has a pilot test to assess the critical thinking skills of students as they progress. Yet like many college teachers around the United States, the faculty remain 29_____ that their work as educators can be measured by a “learning 30_____ such as a graduate’s ability to investigate and reason”. However the professors can use 31_____ metrics to measure how well students do in three key areas: critical thinking, written communication, and quantitative literacy.Despite the success of the experiment, the actual results are worrisome, and mostly 32_____ earlier studies. The organizers of the experiment concluded that far fewer students were “achieving at high levels on a critical thinking than they were doing for written communication or quantitative literacy”. And that conclusion is based only on students nearing graduation.
American universities, despite their global 33_____ for excellence in teaching, have only begun to demonstrate what they can produce in real-world learning. Knowledge-based degrees are still important. But employers are 34_____ advanced thinking skills from college graduate. If the intellectual worth of a college degree can be 35_____ measured, more people will seek higher education—and come out better thinkers.
