Many colleges and universities now require incoming students (called freshmen in the old days) to take a course on what being in college entails — a ‘First Year Experience” (FYE) course. Are they worth the time, or is this another way for school officials to coddle students and make themselves look useful?
In today’s Martin Center article, Gary Frankel, who taught such a course at Texas A&M, gives his assessment.
He writes:
Ostensibly, these courses are meant to help freshmen make the academic leap from high school to college, and thereby improve student retention. They do this by teaching academic success strategies, such as note-taking or utilizing professors’ office hours, and informing students about the various resources and programs available to them on campus. FYE courses also seek to help students “belong” on campus, though what that really means is nebulous at best, and evidence that any of this really works is scant.
Frankel spent some of the time covering academic skills where the students might have been deficient, such as taking notes. College students don’t know how to take notes? A bad reflection on our K–12 schools. He also writes about the part of the course that was prepared by the university: “For the other four weeks, however, the FYE’s organizers sent pre-prepared slide decks that I was required to present. They covered Aggie Core Values, Wellness and Mental Health, Academic Success Strategies, and Goal Setting and Careers. The content in these presentations was juvenile to the point of being insulting and was wholly inappropriate for students whom we expect to think and act like adults.”
Read the whole thing.