<p><a href=“http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/678[/url]”>http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/678</a>
This blog emphasizes the advantages of the smaller class size and an emphasis on teaching. The title certainly draws your attention.</p>
<p>High school and below covers basic generalist knowledge. In college you specialize in one or two fields. Is it all that surprising that retention of general trivia declines in four years?</p>
<p>This is old, old stuff. There was a huge thread on it before.</p>
<p>Basically, it was a current events, very basic economics, and American History College-Bowl type test. On average, everyone did pretty badly on it. In general, though, the “prestige” colleges scored well above everyone else – both the freshmen and the seniors. The seniors showed little improvement (or even some decline) vs. the freshmen, but they were still way ahead of almost everyone else (basically, in the mid-60% range). Some of the schools were downright embarassing, with incoming freshmen and seniors both scoring in the 20-30% range (but they showed great percentage improvement!).</p>
<p>Rhodes and Grove City get props because their seniors scored almost as well as Yale freshmen, and their freshmen weren’t close. I suppose that’s good, but I don’t think you’ll see Rhodes bragging about it much. Among the prestige schools, Berekeley and Hopkins were outliers; their seniors scored noticeably worse (6-10%) than their freshmen. That is weird and not explained.</p>