Exams are over and college students are home for the holiday break. Parents are certain to ask what they learned this semester. There’s a better question: Why did you learn this semester?

I think this helps students frame individual classes in a larger context of developing critical thinking skills and choosing a career.

On the first day of class, I explain to students that a typical bachelor's degree divides roughly 120 credit hours into three categories of about 40 hours each: broad general education, courses related to your field and deep specialization in your major.

At first glance, you might not see how these different classes fit together, but there's a method to it. College is teaching you to think in a new way.

A college education is designed to change a person's way of knowing, from one based on personal experience to one based on abstract thought and formal reasoning. The ability to think in terms of models ‒ to engage in formal, abstract thought ‒ is one of the great human capabilities, though it requires focused training and practice to develop.

To build a mind that is flexible and can apply........

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