Book Review: How College Works - Daniel F. Chambliss & Christopher G. Takacs
Centuries into American higher education, we see astonishingly low retention and graduation rates of undergraduate students. Yet these numbers vary wildly across institutions, with some schools approaching close to 100% retention. What is different about the students that retain and the institutions they attend? Do the schools offer better opportunities for learning? What should administrators be measuring to increase student satisfaction, retention, and learning outcomes? Published in 2014 by Harvard University Press, How College Works presents a decade-long research study that seeks to answer just these questions. Authors Daniel F. Chambliss and Christopher G. Takacs use relationships to frame the college experience. They suggest, “What really matters is who meets whom, and when” (p. 16). Relationships are crucial to the choices students make, and the best colleges strategically leverage people and spaces to the benefit of students.
How College Works is organized chronologically, beginning with pre-college activities and ending with alumni satisfaction metrics. Chambliss and Takacs open the book by describing the research study from which it resulted. Over 11 years (1999-2010), Chambliss and Takacs used five methods to collect data about a single institution—Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. The methods used were alumni interviews, a panel interview that followed 100 students, annual surveys of senior students (part of a national consortium), analysis of college writing, and projects of opportunity that supplemented the main study. The authors are clear that even though the research was a case study for a single institution, they believe the findings to be applicable to colleges nationwide and offer implications for practice accordingly.
Because the focus of the book is on the importance of relationships to learning, Chambliss and Takacs share three key findings from their research:
Satisfactory personal relationships are a prerequisite for learning . . .
Personal connections are often the central mechanism and daily motivators of the student experience . . .
For countless students, long-lasting friendships with fellow students and sometimes teachers are a major result of the college experience. (p. 4)
Chapter 2 thus identifies how relationships are formed through pre-college experiences and the early weeks of the first semester. Orientation activities are helpful in introducing students to one another, but the relationships tend to fizzle out due to lack of continued proximity. Residential communities, however, force proximity. The traditional-style dorms with long hallways and shared bathrooms are best for cultivating relationships among students, even if students think this layout is less desirable. Sports teams also force proximity with a small group of people, with an additional focus on performance goals. Many students turn to Greek life for its exclusivity and other extracurricular activities for finding peers with shared interests. Finally, musical groups provide a large number of students through which freshmen find a core group of friends. Chambliss and Takacs conclude the chapter by discussing how academics impact first-year relationships, especially between students and introductory-level course professors and among students trying to fit in with their peer group. The academic rigor of college might call some students to a stronger performance to keep up with peers, force other students to hide studying habits to fit in with less motivated peers, or even worse, some will drop out.
In Chapter 3, Chambliss and Takacs explore how the university-wide scheduling of courses influences students’ selection of classes, exposure to fields, and advising experience. Students tend to choose courses based on the time of day offered, recommendations from peers, and the desirability of the instructor. Within many colleges, students have self-advised long before the official meeting with an academic advisor, which limits students’ exploration of academic options. Chambliss and Takacs also discuss mentoring and the importance of having excellent instructors teach introductory courses; students will often commit to or rule out a major based on experiences in these courses. In Chapter 4, the authors clarify misconceptions about class size statistics in national rankings. What is presented as a low instructor-to-student ratio is really an average of large and small class sizes; this in itself is not representative because popular majors will have large classes and less popular majors will enroll just a few students in each class. There are benefits and drawbacks to both large and small classes, and instructors need to know how to teach all classes well.
Chapter 5 addresses belonging in the middle of the college journey. The authors use Collins’ reformulation of Durkheim’s criteria for group membership to explain college social groups: physical copresence, shared focus of attention, common activities around the focus of attention, and exclusivity (pp. 79-81). Chambliss and Takacs explain how residential life sets students up for this type of belonging along with extracurricular organizations and parties. They suggest that institutions have power in directing whom students meet and to which groups they choose to belong, starting with the activities discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 6 resumes an academic focus in which Chambliss and Takacs discuss participants’ gains in writing, speaking, and critical thinking. They also highlight learning gains in laboratory science courses but indicate many students avoid these courses because of the perceived difficulty. Likewise, study abroad offers learning gains, but participation is in large part dictated by the views of a student’s social group. Chambliss and Takacs conclude the chapter by writing, “Students best learn skills in a supportive community, with relationships that value and encourage those students and those skills. The real people involved—not the abstract “programs”—are crucial” (p. 133).
In Chapter 7, Chambliss and Takacs turn to seniors and alumni to discuss the skills these participants embody as a result of college. In addition to the academic skills from Chapter 6, these participants gained confidence and long-lasting friendships with peers and professors. The authors argue that alumni satisfaction is an important metric—perhaps more so than undergraduate assessments of learning—because this measure justifies the time and financial costs of college throughout the lifespan. Finally, in Chapter 8, Chambliss and Takacs summarize the book, offer suggestions for practice, and dispel two myths about achieving desired outcomes.
Throughout the book, Chambliss and Takacs keep a clear focus and remind readers about their premise: the student experience is what matters in college, and that experience is governed by relationships. To this end, the authors reminded readers several times that the measure of effectiveness should be the individual student, not tools like teaching evaluations or standardized assessments of learning; they offered suggestions for keeping the focus on students throughout each chapter by highlighting student stories and considerations for practice.
The research foundation for this book is strong; the data spans a decade, and the research team used a variety of methods to minimize the effects of weaknesses from any one method. Additionally, whenever possible, Chambliss and Takacs compared their research to national data sets (e.g., the senior survey results from all participating members of the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium). The majority of the book included findings from interviews, however, which makes for a readable story. Furthermore, the authors framed their findings with relevant literature. This is especially helpful for situating the findings within well-researched aspects of higher education like belonging, engagement, and high-impact practices for learning outcomes.
My primary critique of How College Works is the limited scope. Chambliss and Takacs encourage readers to apply the findings to any institution, though qualitative research generally should not be extrapolated in this manner. Even if administrators at other four-year institutions try some of the practices in Chapter 8, large sections of higher education are excluded from the application. Community colleges, for example, have little or no student life, residential communities, extracurricular opportunities, or athletic programs. Thus, assessment and teacher scheduling might be the only takeaways from this book, which mostly misses the premise of relationships influencing undergraduate learning. Additionally, Chambliss and Takacs briefly address online education mostly to say that students lack peer interaction, which means they will be less motivated to engage in the behaviors necessary for learning; the authors do not offer suggestions for improving relationality in the online context.
Additionally, the study included just a few types of student voices. First, for the touted importance of alumni satisfaction, all the interviews shared in the book were from just undergraduate students, even though the panel was followed for five years after graduation. Second, Chambliss and Takacs said schools should follow up with students who leave before graduation in addition to alumni for the most well-rounded picture of how their college affects students, but this study did not track students who withdrew from the college. Third, there was no discussion of the transfer student experience; these students would presumably enter the narrative around Chapter 3 or 5, thereby missing the power of pre-college activities and the first-year residence hall community. Fourth, the only comparison between groups was male and female, and that was mostly related to choosing a major or mentor. It would be helpful to know how different genders engage with specific programs and activities. It is also important to know how different demographics experience each of the eight chapter topics, such as racial or ethnic minority students, international students, students from different geographical regions or socioeconomic statuses, or students in different majors.
How College Works is a useful read for anyone interested in the student perspective of college outcomes. Chambliss and Takacs seem to be talking to administrators, deans, or department chairs primarily since these people have the power to carry out the changes recommended. The authors do, however, include a section in the final chapter that offers recommendations for students to make the most of relationships in college based on the findings from the study. How College Works contributes an important perspective—that of students—to the higher education world as institutions become increasingly concerned with measuring outcomes and justifying costs.
