A little "light" reading to start the Holidays

Well, there are 9 days left of the year, and I have 4 books left. It is a true race to the finish in the mist of holiday season.  I have read two books since Friday and I am close to being back on track.

In graduate school, a professor told us that any of us in Student Affairs needed to take a closer look at Richard Arum's Academically Adrift. Well, a few years later, I finally got around to reading the book. In this extremely long study (and highly technical journal article,) a study analyzed the rising cost of tuition compared to the amount of actual learning that occurs in higher education.

While other studies have brought up some of these fears ( students are not increasing their critical thinking, students are not reading and writing enough,etc.,), I had trouble with this book as a whole because of the measurement used. I did find it interesting, yet expected, about the impact of socioeconomic factors have on success and learning in college. As a whole, I found this book to be okay, but not a earth-shattering as far as  news in the higher education world.

The best thing about this book was that it reminded me that I needed to keep reading scholarly articles in order to stay up to-date in to trends in higher education.

I just finished a Christmas Carol. 4 more books to go!

Happy Reading!