Students’ manners that are
going to college will be changed due to subjects that have been taught. The
most comprehensive, systematic review to date on the question of college impact
for student is found in Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini's tome, How
College Affects Students (1991). Examining more than 2,600 empirical
studies completed over a period of fifty years, the authors considered students’
change during college in reference to 10 aspects. However, the main points that
can be concluded from the 10 aspects can be divided into three major aspects;
verbal, quantitative, and subject matter competence; changes of identity, self-concept,
and self-esteem; career choice and development.
Regarding verbal, quantitative,
and subject-matter competence, the evidence for change during college is
consistent and compelling. Accordingly, "students make statistically
significant gains in general and more specific subject matter knowledge during
their undergraduate years" (p. 107), with apparent changes in general
verbal skills, general mathematical or quantitative skills, and specific
subject-matter knowledge. It means students who do not have specific goal for
their career can be persuaded by their study during their year on college. For
instance, there is someone who is going to college, but still do not know what
career must he choose, but after 4 years on college, he might be able to take
suitable career for his life. However, in quantitative aspect, they said that
"net effect of college on verbal skills may be somewhat smaller and the
effect on mathematical skills may be somewhat larger than that indicated by
typical freshman-to-senior gains" (p. 108). It can be seen from this
statement, “Studies with more detailed measures of teachers’ education levels
and coursework in subject areas found that, at least in math and science,
academic preparation does positively influence student achievement. Having an
advanced degree in subjects outside of math and science, however, does not
appear to affect student achievement”. Any evidence for between-college effects
on these outcomes suggests that "measures of institutional 'quality' or
environmental characteristics have [little] more than a small, perhaps trivial,
net influence on how much a student learns during four years of college"
(p.108). Research related to within-college effects on these outcomes has
demonstrated that neither academic major nor small discussion-oriented
classrooms make any appreciable difference in mastery of factual subject
matter, although it well-sequenced, modular, and individualized strategies,
when combined with frequent feedback and student involvement, do make a
difference. More consistent, however, is the evidence "that certain kinds
of students learn more from one instructional approach than from another"
(p. 110). With regard to long-term effects on these outcomes it seems rather
clear that "college graduates have a more substantial factual knowledge
base" and are more inclined to "engage in activities that are likely
to add to their knowledge" (p. 111) than those whose formal education ends
with the completion of secondary school.
Changes on measures of
identity, self-concept, and self-esteem during the college years consistently
support a significant positive effect, although not dramatic, for students,
because college can build students’ self-confidence increases slowly, but
surely. The evidence tends to support generally linear gains in academic and
social self-concepts, as well as "students' beliefs about themselves in
such areas as their popularity in general and with the opposite sex, their
leadership abilities, their social self-confidence, and their understanding of
others" (p. 203). In addition, they gain in self-esteem. With the caveat that
much of the research on the net effects of college on these particular outcomes
is too often confounded by age and normal maturation, and absent controls for
family background or other relevant characteristics, Pascarella and Terenzini
concluded that "postsecondary educational attainment appears to be related
positively to changes in students' ratings of themselves relative to their
peers" (p. 204), in terms of both academic self-concept and social
self-concept. Such effects, however, appear to be small, mostly indirect, and
interrelated with other characteristics. Although characteristics such as
institutional size and selectivity may exert limited indirect effects, it
appears that "there are few changes in students' self-images and self-esteem
associated with attending various kinds of colleges or universities" (p.
205). Support for any conditional effect of college on these measures is quite
limited, although there seems to be evidence of a few sex-and race-related
differences. All in all, the "effects of educational attainment on
academic and social self-concepts are general rather than conditional" (p.
207). Concerning the long-term effects on these outcomes, the benefits of
college seem to persist for at least seven to ten years, and probably longer.
However, the authors caution educators to withhold confidence in the research
in this domain, since the literature is novel and subject to many
methodological constraints that warrant a more limited conclusion.
"It is clear that
students frequently change their career plans during college," and that
they "become significantly more mature, knowledgeable, and focused during
college in thinking about planning for a career" (pp. 487–488). In terms
of net influence, one of the "most pronounced and unequivocal effects of
college on career is its impact on the type of job one obtains" (p. 488),
it offering an advantage primarily through occupational status and prestige.
Whether by socialization or certification a college education offers access to better
positioned, and potentially more satisfactory, employment. College education
can do that by helping students identify clear career paths and the knowledge
and skills required along different paths, students can enroll in the right
courses to better position themselves for job opportunities. Also, among
between-college effects are the advantages to occupational status of a
four-year degree, an elite institution experience, and to a lesser extent,
enrollment in a large institution. Selective colleges also have modest effects
on women choosing sex-atypical majors (e.g., engineering). Regardless of where
students begin, their selection of a major/occupation tends to reflect the most
popular choice at a given institution. Within-college effects have included
varying influences of academic major and achievement, extracurricular
accomplishments, interaction with faculty, and work experience. Conditional
effects on career choice and development have highlighted varying degrees of
positive influence afforded to non-white men and women with regard to
occupational status in the professions. Last, existing data on long-term
effects have detected little direct intergenerational influence on career
development, although it is quite clear that "attending and graduating
from college is perhaps the single most important determinant of the kind of
work an individual does; and the nature of one's work has implications for an
array of outcomes that shape one's life" (p. 495).
In summary, two
generations of researchers have established the finding that positive
individual effects of higher education are related directly to a lot of
factors, especially subject-matter competence, identity, and career. Overall,
the impact of college depends much on student-institution fit and the kinds of
learning experiences encountered along the way that serve to reinforce
compatible characteristics. Cognitive, affective, and practical educational
gains are a function, not so much of where a student goes to college, but
rather what a student does once enrolled in an institution.
Source(s):
PASCARELLA, ERNEST T., and TERENZINI, PATRICK T. 1991. How College Affects Students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
By:
Nanda Rani H.
Academic
Persuasive
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