Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Cuba, Lee J., author

Title Practice for life : making decisions in college / Lee Cuba, Nancy Jennings, Suzanne Lovett, Joseph Swingle
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2016

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xi, 238 pages)
Contents Preface -- Restarting college -- Time -- Connection -- Home -- Advice -- Engagement -- Practice for life -- Appendix -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Summary In this book, which is based on a five-year study following over 200 students at seven colleges, the authors argue that becoming liberally educated is a complex and messy process involving making decisions and learning from them. Colleges create spaces (both physical and metaphysical) in which students must make decisions, often in the face of ambiguous situations. Some of these decisions--like declaring a major--are formal and happen infrequently. Others--like deciding to talk to a professor after class or balancing academic and extracurricular commitments--are informal and occur almost every day. Because most of these decisions have no right or wrong answers, the choices students make, and what they learn from these choices, shape their college experiences. Students can see their decision-making as opportunities to change and reflect, a process by which they learn about themselves and acquire practice for making decisions as adults after college. But they can also see decision-making as an obstacle course for which the best approach is to minimize risk, reduce uncertainty, and finish quickly. In "figuring things out," either seeing decisions as opportunities or obstacles, college students find themselves caught up in a process of self-creation and re-creation. This simple observation about the college experience has neither been fully appreciated nor systematically explored. Yet the implications of casting student experiences as a series of choices that offer opportunities for re-creation have consequences for students and colleges alike. Students don't just start college and then finish it. They start and re-start college many times.-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject College students -- United States -- Attitudes
Decision making -- Psychological aspects
Education, Higher -- United States -- Evaluation
Academic achievement -- Economic aspects -- United States
EDUCATION -- Higher.
Academic achievement -- Economic aspects
College students -- Attitudes
Decision making -- Psychological aspects
Education, Higher -- Evaluation
United States
Form Electronic book
Author Jennings, Nancy E., author
Lovett, Suzanne, 1958- author.
Swingle, Joseph, author
ISBN 9780674972384
0674972384