Do universities teach students to think critically?

Academically Adrift all over again? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/20/studies-challenge-findings-academically-adrift (but doesn't really undermine those findings at all.)

In ancient Greece, the great philosophers taught their students how to think first before teaching them any knowledge. Not sure since when, the modern world education, from kindergarten to university, seems to have gone the exact opposite. Being content-focus is a bigger issue beyond higher education. Indeed, the critical-thinking focus International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum gives a breathe of fresh air to the rather stale knowledge-stuffed outdated A Level. However, the uptake of IB in secondary school is scarce in the UK. Even if students have gone through the IB education, the UK higher education might fail to continue to nurture these youngsters' critical thinking ability and creativity. In all, if we really want to get students career-ready, a reform to the entire education system is needed at all levels, and not just in higher education.

It is depressing to see education again reduced to preparation for work. Training should be the responsibility of employers but they will naturally be happy if the taxpayer picks up the tab for it. I am not sure that employers really want critical thinking since they will then get plenty of disgruntled employees frustrated by hierarchies, outraged by inefficiencies and hemmed in by conformist cultures.

Well what did they expect given the current level of grade inflation for both A level and HE students ? Teaching can only be as good as the student's ability to absorb it. Critical thinking tells me the problem needs to be addressed from both ends.

Education - at any level but particular at University - ought to be about equipping students with open and enquiring minds. If they know how to learn and can think critically, they can acquire knowledge about any subject when the need arises. Drawback is, it is not so easy to figure out how to actually teach these things, or assess them once taught. Curiosity seems innate in some people and lacking in others, but if you are not curious it can be hard to learn especially independently. As a computer science academic, we have the scope to teach problem-solving, that's really what computing is about. As for formulation of arguments to support the solution you've come up with, I try to teach it in the 'Ethics for Computing' class I teach... a class some students adore and others find dull & tedious. My first degree however is in botany. Did they teach me to have an open and enquiring mind, that was able to manage a change in discipline to the level where I am now? Or was this more innate... I am insanely curious & always ready to run and find out by nature? How can I inculcate this into my students?

This is where work experience and year placements come into play. We cannot necessarily teach students everything needed to be "work ready" (a phrase that I really dislike). Whilst in the workplace students develop skills and confidence that they would otherwise be lacking.

Since professors are regularly canned -- or face a deluge of death threats and hate-mail -- in the US for daring to teach critical thinking skills, it is hardly surprising that they largely avoid threatening the ideological bubbles of their students and their parents. These threats and attacks are overwhelmingly generated from right wing ideologues and their cult followers, while the media smiles and winks, and play "both sides" games. So until and unless the Corporate University system actually takes steps to protect those who teach critical thinking skills, you don't get to complain about their absence.

Could it be argued that if you haven't "learned to think" by the time you get to 1st year of University, it is too late? And that the job of Uni is to specialise?

An interesting contribution to both, What are Universities for? and How well are Universities performing? I wonder if "critical thinking" is something that can be taught or is it more like a "gift of nature" similar to musical ability, athletic ability and an innate curiosity? Perhaps we will never know. For me it indicates the need to have an open mind and, in terms of problem solving, the need for diversity in the membership of teams created to find the best solutions to challenging and important questions like Climate Change.

The first sentence of this article says: "Professional services giant PwC’s recent announcement that new recruits will no longer require at least a 2:1 degree was seen by many as the latest sign that some of the world’s largest employers are losing faith that a good university qualification guarantees a candidate of a certain quality." Does PwC really think they'll find better candidates among people with lesser degrees? I have my doubts about critical thinking in its HR department.... I agree with comment #1 that the new OECD report is in essence a rehash of Arum and Roksa's 2011 Academically Adrift. The media liked back then, and still likes, the 45% figure (BTW, there were some statistical problems with it; see https://www.davidmlane.com/hyperstat/essays/academically_adrift.html). I think even more important is that all but the premier education media overlooked a second conclusion from Arum and Roksa's study: that students of liberal arts programs did improve significantly on the CLA-test whenever their schools featured a large number of courses that required more than 50 pages of significant text to read per week and at least 20 pages of writing in the course of a term. I think most liberal-arts professors know this intuitively, but apparently administrators do not even when it is spelled out in a report. So we know what the solution to the problem is, but there has been no rush to implement it.... Instead, we get STEM, STEMM, STEMM+, etc.

It is frustrating that we're in this position when the value of critical thinking in education and employment has been established for many years. It's also frustrating that there is considerable evidence on how the skills of critical thinking should be taught (including the value of discrete courses in the subject). It can be taught from kindergarten upwards, and can (indeed, should) be included explicitly within every subject taught in schools (and beyond in higher education). It should be no surprise that a country like Singapore (which heads the PISA tables) has, for some years, required that critical thinking is developed throughout its education system.

Critical thinking doesn't exist in a vacuum and is easiest to teach in the context of the particular material in a given course. I wrote and taught a course in Scientific Methods many years ago and found that the less I assumed about the students abilities at the start, the more effective I was in teaching the fundamentals of the scientific method. It isn't easy for young academics to make their thinking explicit to the students. Revealing how exactly we think about a problem can be intimidating for people who still lack confidence in their own abilities. Another major problem is the reticence that we have in questioning the reasoning of our students and encouraging them to question us on our assumptions. The current climate in many institutions views any sort of intellectual challenge as threatening to the mental wellbeing of our charges. I think the problem in some sectors is that "critical theory" has replaced critical thinking in a way that Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida never intended.

I agreed with one or more readers, we need to go basic. Don't teach them but let them learn by making mistakes. Mistakes are experiences that useful knowledge accumulated in process of learning. As for lecturer or educator, don't feed them useless knowledge. A knowledge become useful when they put them into practice. So, educator, give them real life problem and ask them search the knowledge and apply it. The educator, in this case, becomes facilitator or enabler.