Critical thinking has become an essential skill required by both higher education and the workforce. Research to date has reported moderate cross-sectional learning differences in critical thinking as students progress through a 4-year college. However, retention, differential participation, and students’ low test-taking motivation possibly confounded conclusions from prior studies. Controlling for such factors, we found a cross-sectional difference of .24 SDs after 4 years in college (n = 2,381 students, 46 institutions), considerably smaller than what's reported in prior studies. Natural science majors performed the highest and business majors performed the lowest. Minority students achieved only half of the cross-sectional difference (.18 SDs) of white students (.39 SDs), and only 6% of them scored at the Advanced level, compared to 24% of white students.

中文翻译：

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四年级的大学生比一年级的同学更善于批判性思考吗？没那么多，大学专业和种族很重要

批判性思维已成为高等教育和劳动力所需的基本技能。迄今为止的研究表明，随着学生在四年制大学中的进步，批判性思维的横向学习差异适中。然而，保留、差异参与和学生的低应试动机可能会混淆先前研究的结论。控制这些因素后，我们发现大学 4 年后（n = 2,381 名学生，46 个机构）的横截面差异为 0.24 SD s ，远小于先前研究中报告的数据。自然科学专业表现最高，商科专业表现最低。少数族裔学生只取得了横截面差异的一半（0.18 SDs) 的白人学生 (0.39 SD s)，其中只有 6% 的学生取得高级水平，而白人学生的这一比例为 24%。