Lee Cuba, Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College, one of the colleges participating in the study, said the findings must be viewed with caution.
Just because students don’t express an interest in certain things, such as exploring the curriculum, it doesn’t mean students won’t do those things during their time in college.
Another caveat is that since many of the students in the study hailed from good schools, Cuba said, “engagement is assumed or taken for granted.”
The study raises important questions for higher education, Cuba said.
“We don’t believe (students) are going to give up on the grade thing,” Cuba said. At the same time, he said, higher education leaders should think about how to make engagement more prominent in the minds of students and how it might influence the ways students set their aspirations for a given year.
