Students & Parents | General Education

Study: ‘What Will They Learn’ In College? Probably Not Much

CBS PHILADELPHIA   |  October 15, 2014

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – You might have graduated from an Ivy League university, but that doesn’t mean you learned anything.

That’s the takeaway from a new report called “What Will They Learn?” published by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

The research looked at more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities in terms of seven key areas of learning: literature, composition, economics, math, intermediate level foreign language, science and American government/history.

Only 23 national institutions got an ‘A’ grade for requiring classes in six of the seven subjects the ACTA calls “essential.”

For example, Drexel and Temple both earned D grades, while the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State each got a C.

In fact, there didn’t appear to be even one A-grade university in the entire state of Pennsylvania on the list.

“Too many college rating systems rely on largely extraneous measures like alumni giving or selectivity to determine which colleges top their list,” said Anne D. Neal, ACTA president, in a release on the report. “What Will They Learn? looks at the most important data—the strength of a college’s education—to find out which institutions are delivering the tools students will need to succeed in career and community.”

In case you were wondering, Harvard got a D.

To see how other colleges and universities fared, click here.

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