There is plenty of evidence to support the idea that these qualities can be extrapolated across the more than one million full-time, first-year students enrolling in institutions across the country. The American Freshman Project, a long-term study of first-year students, has consistently reported that an overwhelming majority of incoming students decide to go to college for what most of us would regard as good reasons: to learn more about things that interest them (77 percent), to get training for a specific career (75 percent), to gain a general education and appreciation of ideas (65 percent), or to prepare for graduate or professional school (57 percent; Sax and others, 2004). Similarly, at least by their own estimation, first-year students possess the requisite character and ability to succeed. Asignificant majority of them (60 percent or more in each case) rate themselves to be above average in their drive to succeed, academic ability, persistence, and intellectual self-confidence (Sax and others, 2004). Although they don’t necessarily confirm these self-assessments, recent standardized testing results are at least consistent with them. Math and verbal SAT averages have inched upward over the last decade, with the math average currently at its highest point since 1967 (all scores recentered). These changes are not dramatic, but they do (within the limits of standardized testing) fly in the face of the grousing that students are now less prepared for college than they once were.
If incoming students enroll in colleges or universities to get a general education and prepare for graduate school, their reflections of first-year experience suggest that in general they haven’t been disappointed. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) indicates that more than 80 percent of first-year students report a “substantial” gain in their ability to think critically and analytically and in acquiring a broad general education. Additionally, more than half of them said they had made similar gains in acquiring job- or work-related skills (NSSE, 2004).
Yet something seems not quite right about this. The confident, well-prepared, intellectually curious students who are interested in general education seem much less common in the first-year classroom than in tables of survey data and the publicity of admissions and advancement offices. For every Margaret, there seem to be others (and many of them) who are less engaged, less enthusiastic, and less willing to ask questions, seek help, or even attend the “services” we schedule for them. For all the confidence first-year students express in their abilities, the faculty teaching them are more likely to hear the worry and self-doubt expressed by another student: “No matter how much I study, I still feel like I’m not prepared. . . . Some people are good with writing and know a lot of big words, but I don’t.” Somehow, the promise implicit in Margaret’s e-mail fades in light of the less buoyant reality we confront reading our first set of essays, recording midterm grades, and meeting with students who “just don’t understand anything.”
In a sense, both impressions of first-year students are right. They are enthusiastic, intellectually curious, and reasonably well prepared for academic life. Yet at the same time they are easily discouraged, unnerved, and overwhelmed. George D. Kuh puts the matter this way: “For many new students . . . the initial weeks of the first academic term are like being in a foreign land. With only intermittent feedback and classes meeting but two or three times a week, students who think they are doing well are sometimes surprised to discover after their first midterm exam reports that their academic performance is subpar. After six or eight weeks, some have dug a hole so deep that getting back to ground level seems almost impossible” (2005, p. 86). Kuh (2005) goes on to argue that the strangeness of college and university life to the uninitiated causes first-year students to underestimate the challenges they will confront, both in and out of the classroom, and to overestimate their capacity to bring plans and practices in line with the new environment they confront.
There is nothing novel in the observation that the move from high school to college is a difficult one. Students have been told this repeatedly by teachers, counselors, parents, and even those of us at universities in various Welcome Day and orientation presentations.
In spite of the prosaic nature of the observation, it is worth our while to spend some time reflecting on just why the transition is so difficult, and on how the challenges inherent in the “foreign land” of the college campus affect the teaching and learning of first-year students.
If incoming students enroll in colleges or universities to get a general education and prepare for graduate school, their reflections of first-year experience suggest that in general they haven’t been disappointed. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) indicates that more than 80 percent of first-year students report a “substantial” gain in their ability to think critically and analytically and in acquiring a broad general education. Additionally, more than half of them said they had made similar gains in acquiring job- or work-related skills (NSSE, 2004).
Yet something seems not quite right about this. The confident, well-prepared, intellectually curious students who are interested in general education seem much less common in the first-year classroom than in tables of survey data and the publicity of admissions and advancement offices. For every Margaret, there seem to be others (and many of them) who are less engaged, less enthusiastic, and less willing to ask questions, seek help, or even attend the “services” we schedule for them. For all the confidence first-year students express in their abilities, the faculty teaching them are more likely to hear the worry and self-doubt expressed by another student: “No matter how much I study, I still feel like I’m not prepared. . . . Some people are good with writing and know a lot of big words, but I don’t.” Somehow, the promise implicit in Margaret’s e-mail fades in light of the less buoyant reality we confront reading our first set of essays, recording midterm grades, and meeting with students who “just don’t understand anything.”
In a sense, both impressions of first-year students are right. They are enthusiastic, intellectually curious, and reasonably well prepared for academic life. Yet at the same time they are easily discouraged, unnerved, and overwhelmed. George D. Kuh puts the matter this way: “For many new students . . . the initial weeks of the first academic term are like being in a foreign land. With only intermittent feedback and classes meeting but two or three times a week, students who think they are doing well are sometimes surprised to discover after their first midterm exam reports that their academic performance is subpar. After six or eight weeks, some have dug a hole so deep that getting back to ground level seems almost impossible” (2005, p. 86). Kuh (2005) goes on to argue that the strangeness of college and university life to the uninitiated causes first-year students to underestimate the challenges they will confront, both in and out of the classroom, and to overestimate their capacity to bring plans and practices in line with the new environment they confront.
There is nothing novel in the observation that the move from high school to college is a difficult one. Students have been told this repeatedly by teachers, counselors, parents, and even those of us at universities in various Welcome Day and orientation presentations.
In spite of the prosaic nature of the observation, it is worth our while to spend some time reflecting on just why the transition is so difficult, and on how the challenges inherent in the “foreign land” of the college campus affect the teaching and learning of first-year students.
