What the Best College Students Do

Deep learning is the central idea of the book. It involves going beyond the surface of a field of knowledge to explore and comprehend how that field and its theories fit together and make sense. It’s a process of active curiosity and a quest for answers that includes intense research, asking lots of questions, learning to think dispassionately and logically, discussing and comparing ideas with other students and with teachers, and an open-minded interest that reaches continuously toward greater understanding.

This process also develops a student’s ability to find creative, innovative answers to complex questions and problems, a skill that later proves useful in their careers. The author believes that treating higher education as an opportunity to do deep learning is a much richer and more useful approach than simply going to college to get good grades and a degree. Ironically, the deep-learning approach tends to generate good grades anyway. The author found that the most successful students “pursued the development of the dynamic power of the mind, and that end—not academic honors or simply surviving college—became their primary goal” (5).