A significant chunk of students who seek higher education are just spending a bunch of money to spin their wheels, according to new research that finds many are hardly learning anything.

ABC News reports findings in the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses that say 45 percent of 2,300 students surveyed showed no significant development in reading, writing or critical thinking by the end of their sophomore years. The authors are professors at NYU and Virginia.

The coursework seems to be on the light side as well. The study found half of students didn’t take a course that required 20 pages of writing in the previous semester, and a third didn’t take a class that required 40 pages of reading a week.

If you went to college, what knowledge and other benefits did it provide you?

Student Tracking Finds Limited Learning in College [ABC News]

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