According to this book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, on the question “are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there?” the answer according to U of Chicago review is “for a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college.  http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?isbn=9780226028552.

Well that’s money well spent.  Guess the kids must be really cramming a lot of learning into their last two years.