Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College - Hardcover

Lee Cuba; Nancy Jennings; Suzanne Lovett; Joseph Swingle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674970667 ISBN 13: 9780674970663

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2016

Synopsis

From the day they arrive on campus, college students spend four years or sometimes more making decisions that shape every aspect of their academic and social lives. Whether choosing a major or a roommate, some students embrace decision making as an opportunity for growth, while others seek to minimise challenges and avoid risk. Practice for Life builds a compelling case that a liberal arts education offers students a complex, valuable process of self-creation, one that begins in college but continues far beyond graduation.

Sifting data from a five-year study that followed over two hundred students at seven New England liberal arts colleges, the authors uncover what drives undergraduates to become engaged with their education. They found that students do not experience college as having a clear beginning and end but as a continuous series of new beginnings. They start and restart college many times, owing to the rhythms of the academic calendar, the vagaries of student housing allocation, and other factors. This dynamic has drawbacks as well as advantages. Not only students but parents and faculty place enormous weight on some decisions, such as declaring a major, while overlooking the small but significant choices that shape their daily experience.

For most undergraduates, deep engagement with their college education is at best episodic rather than sustained. Yet these disruptions in engagement provide students with abundant opportunities for reflection and course-correction as they learn to navigate the future uncertainties of adult life.

About this title

About the Author

Lee Cuba is Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College.

Nancy Jennings is Associate Professor of Education at Bowdoin College.

Suzanne Lovett is Associate Professor of Psychology at Bowdoin College.

Joseph Swingle is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Wellesley College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674970667
• ISBN 13: 9780674970663
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 220