Most succinct headline of the year: "College students lack skills"
Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.
More than 50% of students at four-year schools and more than 75% at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
Devoted Reader (and tireless devil's advocate) Brian H. sent this to me with a defence of those hapless college kids - "Have you tried reading a credit card offer?!?!?" I agree, and absolve college students of any shame from failing to understand an offer in which the proposed provider has, as many credit card companies do, buried all the important information in lilliputian font and impenetrable legalese/finanese. Warren Buffett himself couldn't figure out what Bank One really plans to charge you, so we can't expect the coeds to know.
However:
The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study. Almost 20% of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30% of two-year students had only basic math skills.
These depressing results are partially due to the fact that, despite all the progress that women and nerds have made in the world, it's still considered cool - or at least acceptable - to brag about one's lack of math skills and hatred of mathematics. My guess is that the new, "fuzzier" methods of math instruction that require students to reinvent the wheel might also be behind the preponderance of students who can't figure out just how much gas is needed to make those wheels turn.
Posted by kswygert at January 19, 2006 05:48 PM