Define "Learning"

I am not going to respond in-depth to today's David Brooks column about college, for various reasons. But I was struck by this early paragraph:

Colleges are supposed to produce learning. But, in their landmark study, “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that, on average, students experienced a pathetic seven percentile point gain in skills during their first two years in college and a marginal gain in the two years after that. The exact numbers are disputed, but the study suggests that nearly half the students showed no significant gain in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills during their first two years in college.

There's a bit of conflation here, isn't there, between "leaning" and "skills"? Okay, learning skills is often an important part of learning, but learning stuff is also a big, important part. Not to brag or anything, but I think my critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills were all pretty damn good when I got to college. I'm not really sure they've improved all that much. But, have I learned anything? Hell yes! I've learned a whole big bunch of stuff, knowledge, facts, and also, by the way, some more specialized skills and techniques like abstract algebra and complex analysis. I've learned about scores of legal cases, I've read thousands of pages of political philosophy, I learned a bit of astronomy and a bit of economics and bits of history. I've learned plenty. Other people have learned plenty, too. And I bet that in most career-preparation graduate schools, like medical schools or law schools, almost everything you learn is either facts or specialized skills, not broad-based skills like the ones Brooks mentions. Arguably the idea behind the educational system is that the pre-college levels help you learn how to do the basic thinking stuff he's describing, and then once you get to college you use those basic skills for higher learning. If people don't improve in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing while at college, maybe that's because they've been getting better at those things before they walk in the door.

Now, I don't know that that's the correct explanation for what's going on. And I certainly don't dispute the basic idea that judging education institutions on the quality of their inputs is silly. But it doesn't make sense to expect colleges, in an ideal system at least, to be the place where people learn the basics of how to think. That should have already happened, and in college you should get to learn stuff.