NY Times: Does College Make You Smarter?

New York Times, Room for Debate -- Does College Make You Smarter?:

First there was the news that students in American universities study a lot less than they used to. Now we hear, in a recent book titled Academically Adrift, that 45% of the nation's undergraduates learn very little in their first two years of college. ... Have colleges, in their efforts to keep graduation rates high and students happy, dumbed down their curriculums? If they have, who is to blame? What should parents and federal taxpayers do?

• Philip Babcock (UC-Santa Barbara, Department of Economics), An F for Effort
• Leon Botstein (President, Bard College), Products of Rote Learning
• Sean Decatur (Dean of Arts & Science, Oberlin College), The Winner: A Liberal Education
• George Leef (John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy), No Work, All Play, No Job
• C. Kent McGuire (President, Southern Education Foundation), A Different Type of Student
• Mark C. Taylor (Chair, Department of Religion, Columbia University.), The Student as Profit Center
• Gaye Tuchman (University of Connecticut, Department of Sociology), Will I Be Able to Get a Job?