College Students Lack Literacy

Frr writes to tell us that CNN has a rather disturbing confirmation of what many of us have already seen in practice. In a recent literacy study it was found that "more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers." The literacy study took a look at three different type of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents, and having basic math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Comments

College Deters Reading

[Zaurus]

I, for one, am not surprised. I never read __less__ books in my life than when I was in college. I was much too busy trying to get the course busy-work done to do any reading, or much learning for that matter.

Yay diversity!

[The Only Druid]

Oh, wait, you mean that by including all this concern for non-academic characteristics like sports, diversity (of background, not ideas), and the ilk our schools have lost the ability to test for the right skills?

I'm sure this thread will fill essentially instantly with anecdotal stories about how dumb everyone was at our colleges. Yes, great, whatever.

Frankly, I wish everyone could have seen the great 20/20 special on our school system last Friday. We're crippling our ability to compete internationally by focusing on the wrong things: we don't want kids to feel bad, so we've got helicopter parents; teachers don't want to worry about getting fired, so we've got horrible teachers' unions; we aren't willing to let some kids occasionally lose-out because a public school failed to compete with other nearby schools, so we don't have vouchers like most of the European nations; etc.

Now, someone will come complain about how vouchers are bad for schools (despite universally benefiting the quality of schools in Europe), how unions protect teachers (despite the fantastic proof of how bad such unions were by 20/20, including a 10 page diagram from the Unions showing how difficult it is to fire someone), etc.

Eduflation?

[Black Parrot]

15-20 years ago a guy working on his PhD told me that that getting a PhD had become like getting a MA or MS had been a generation earlier, getting a MA/MS like getting a BA/BS had been, getting a BA/BS like graduating from high school had been, and so on down the chain.

I've always been tempted to dismiss that as just a "back in my day" story about walking to school in a snowstorm, but it's hard to dismiss certain facts. For example, Robert Graves tells us in his biography that when he an ~8 year old, about 100 years ago, he was "doing ok with Latin, but having trouble with Greek".

And now people are having trouble with their own native language when they graduate from college...

Re:Eduflation?

[DarkSarin]

I'll give up the mod points, since I am somewhat qualified to speak to the subject on two scores:
first, I grew up under the watchful eye of a professor--my dad.
Second, I just finished my MS in Psychology--and am continuing on for a PhD. Education and IQ testing are hallmarks of the science.

Now for my real comments: dear old dad always stated that he failed about 50% of his incoming freshman students for the simple reason that were unable to properly read or write. Granted, this was not the most presitigious university, but it is still a very sad commentary on the state of affairs. For the record, he taught history--generally Middle Eastern, but frequently world history, or classes on economic history (his dissertaion

Next, I have heard similar comments, and have a few concerns. First, _never_ trust a single source. One data point is merely an anecdote, and is statistically useless. Second, when viewed from the outside, most experiences do not seem as difficult (or as easy) as they really are. It is difficult, if not impossible, to completely identify the complexities of someone else's experience.

That said, I suspect that getting a PhD is easier now than it used to be. I also suspect that some of this is strictly due to the level of knowledge and understanding that is required slipping. This is almost impossible to measure. After all, if you measure only the bare facts that are required to do a PhD, you will undoubtedly show that a modern PhD is much harder--there are, after all, many more areas of study available now than 50 years ago, and each area has expanded its body of knowledge--in most disciplines. This is why eventually there will be very few, if any, people who know enough about the entirety of a single subject like psychology or physics to integrate the complete body of knowledge into a reasonably coherent picture--there wil be too much information. There is now. Just as it has its rewards, specialization has its costs.

The place to begin education reform is not at the college level, however. Education reform does NOT start in the grade schools either. It starts, largely, at home. It is about becoming a society in which education and intelligence and knowledge about useful stuff is valued, instead knowledge about the latest celebrity marriage or affair. Where math trumps football, and physics trumps NASCAR. I've got no problem with a society that produces and enjoys entertainment--I am a geek that loves computer games after all--but when that begins to supplant a thirst for knowledge and fosters an attitude that smart people aren't cool, I get a little jittery.

If a kids parents don't value education, knowledge and understanding, then the child won't value these either. Too many kids don't learn to read until they are in school of some sort. Too many kids don't learn real math until high school (theory, not simple stuff). I don't remember hearing about certain theorems until high school, but I know that had these things been pushed a little more, I could have learned it. Instead I was stuck in a class with 35 other kids, and told to sit down, shut up and look attentive. School, until college, was infinitely boring for me because of that attitude from most of my teachers. I learned to value learning and knowledge in high school despite the stuff at school, not because of it. I didn't apply that until I got to college. I still pay for my wasted youth.

Finally, a comment about the renormalization of the "IQ" test scores that a sibling post mentions: this is to be expected. After all, the definition of the IQ score is a normalized score to begin with. It is mental age divided by chronological age, or in other words--how much do you understand compared to what the average person of your age group understands. How smart are you compared to your peers. A very useful concept, but it is NOT a measure of raw intelligence. It developed in France as a method of identifying those children who had special needs and could be helped to catch up

Fewer books

[Anonymous Coward]

___Fewer___ books, dammit.

Re:Fewer books

[damian cosmas]

Grandparent illustrates the point on education and literacy very well.

Re:Fewer books

[Thangodin]

Reeling and writhing (as Lewis Carol put it) are taught in grade school and polished in high school. You should have this down by the time you hit college. The same thing goes for attrition, distraction, stultification, and derision, and the rest of math. College or university is where you apply these skills in the pursuit of higher learning--the focus then should be content or application rather than mere expression. When I went to school, I was expected to read in grade two, did hours of grammar and spelling homework in grades three to five, was studying Shakespeare and romantic poetry by grade nine, and was doing calculus and algebra by grade twelve. What the hell happened? Who suddenly decided that kids weren't capable of this?

The most depressing change in post-secondary education is that it has moved from the liberal arts and sciences approach to the trade skill approach. The ideal of university used to be that the university was a resource of knowledge and wisdom to which students would come to drink, but were not forced to drink, and it was a given that they would already have the skills to digest what they imbibed. In places like Oxford and Cambridge, it was a given that many students simply did not bother to attend classes. They took advantage of the libraries, read widely, consulted with professors, and spent long hours in earnest conversation, learning as much in the cafes and taverns from professors and fellow students and as they would in a class. The discipline required to steer ones own studies is the mark of a good student; if the professor is required to take attendance and teach rudimentary skills, the battle is already lost. In the movie A Beautiful Mind John Nash originally shows a profound contempt for course lectures, both in giving them and taking them, because he is obsessed with his own direction of study. A mediocre student will note the professors position and parrot it. A good student will take this and others into account and play freely with the ideas and arrive at his own opinion. If he is a brilliant student, he will form an opinion which is a genuine advance upon existing ideas.

In connection with this, the current trend of questioning the political leanings of professors and insisting upon neutral or balanced opinions is in keeping with the expectation of mediocrity. You don't learn from people who agree with you. A student who emerges with the opinions of his professors is an ape: monkey see, monkey do, but the fear of professors with differing opinions indicates that those who hold this fear expect students to be apes. And a student who expects to go through university and come out with the same opinions he went in with is an arrogant git who intends to preserve his own ignorance. These people should be identified and failed at the earliest possible opportunity. At one time they would have been, but political correctness is the bulwark of mediocrity. You cannot challenge a student's beliefs, no matter how idiotic--just put them on the bell-curve and process them through like so much ground meat. In the place of sound and nuanced reasoning, graduates learn a few sophomoric post-modernist parlour tricks that can be used in the defense of whatever drivel is currently fashionable. And it does not help that the entry standards are so low that professors are expected to teach rudimentary skills that should have been learned five or ten years previously. In this atmosphere, an ape who can dress himself and use a toilet is regarded as an accomplishment.

Try making change...

[__aaclcg7560]

Try being in a resturant during a power-outage or the ordering computer is down, and there's no calculator in the building. That's when you see the resturant staff really struggling trying to figure out the bill and then making change. As my Dad keeps telling me, the fine art of making change without a computer telling what the change is disappeared a long time ago.

Re:Damn

[Jace of Fuse!]

Take a US college course online. I work with people bragging about how they're going to have a college degree soon and they know it's utter bullshit. The classes are practically impossible to fail from what I've seen (yet somehow people are failing them anyway).

When some of my friends say they will have "earned" their right to have a better job, I laugh at them. I laugh because they haven't earned anything. I tell them they haven't learned anything. They haven't even been to college. They simply bought a degree online. That is practically all it is. Buying a degree. No longer are you required to actually learn. It's similar to how high school has become daycare. "No need to learn anything in highschool, you can buy your education online later. Hope you can read tho. LMAO LOL!"

(Disclaimer: This specifically refers to the online courses in my area, and may not apply to whatever college you take online classes with.)

Re: Patience

[Black Parrot]

> Patience... Not Literacy... It takes too much time to read the fine print on those damn offers...

And it may be the case that sometimes companies don't want you to understand an offer very well.

It's standardized.

[Grendel Drago]

If you've gotten a credit card offer recently, there's a medium-sized standard box they include on the black-and-white legalese page which tells you the real (not introductory) interest rate, for instance.

Despite this, some people will briefly glance at the color glossy flyer, see "ZERO PERCENT (introductory) INTEREST!" and be shocked, yes, shocked, when the rates hop to twenty-seven percent or something ridiculous like that.

Re:It's standardized.

[Austerity Empowers]

Thus leading one to wonder if college students lack literacy, or are simply too lazy to read everything that comes across their face. It's not rocket science, but you do have to read through some pretty small fine print to get to the truth.

I have been reading these responses, and

[Descalzo]

It's funny. Everyone knows they ANALawyer. Everyone is quick to say, "... but IANADoctor."

No one ever ends a rant on education with IANATeacher. Why is that?

It's not just college students...

[NerveGas]

... it's nearly everyone. Last year, our management had some disputes with the building owners, and there was a lot of wrangling back and forth about terms of the contract. I asked one of the managers to let me look over the contract, I sat down with it for about fifteen minutes, and then explained everything to him. He had a hard time accepting that just some random joe (actually, a college dropout) could understand the contract, so he paid a lawyer to go over it, and the lawyer told him that I was correct.

    To be fair, I think that quite a bit of that came from a certain physics professor that I had. He was the head of the department, and I ended up getting him for about 8 of the physics classes that I took. He expected you to understand every nuance of what you had studied, and to understand it *completely*. Often he would ask questions that were seemingly impossible to solve, but if you looked at what he gave you and gave it enough thought, you would find that in every case he had given you everything you needed to know - even if it wasn't obvious that he had.

steve

Re:The bad news is....

[Debiant]

I don't live in US, but I don't think it's just student being lazy. Much depends what people are required to do and what is given to them. Lot of education is being build on the idea of learning to do or understand some specific thing only.

What good education should be about, is teaching pupils about good common knowledge and deduction skills that make people to undestand how things connect to each other.

Intelligence itself is in fact much about how well one can handle wide wariety of things, it's mostly accomplished I think organizing information such way that it's both efficient to use and to remember. It's easier to remember why things work way they do, than to remember how happened in each specific case. It helps a lot if you also know wide variery of things, because in that case one can find common things between them. Bit like some comperssion algorithm: more there is common between diffrent things, more there is repetition and less space it takes to store and use.

However lot of schools teach just a profession and bits' of here and there without clear idea why. They teach how but not really why. Studends are left in a lone island with badly organized library that contains lot of information but where there is little help to find the relevant ones.
Such an enviroment creates just lot of people who do the just what is required of them. They do the mandatory, and not much else. Main thrust of any education should be about controlling and understanding issues at hand, not about repeating what has been told.

I'm inclined to think so called 'classic education' that was a standard about century ago, was much better and flexible in a long run than nowdays more practical and profession orientated education.

Re:The bad news is....

[Ztream]

Perhaps life is more complex nowadays? I don't think a person living 100 years ago needed to learn even a tenth of what people need to learn today just to get by. So maybe people aren't lazy, but rather stressed and distracted, causing some "basic" stuff becomes down-prioritized. People today are all too aware of the possibilities of action and knowledge in the world, possibilities that -- if realised -- would take up countless life times. I know it stresses me out, and I think it is a problem humanity will eventually have to deal with.

Who needs math? There are calculators

[saskboy]

"Who needs math? There are calculators."

Ever whipped out a calculator when trying to pay a tab at a restaurant? Who brings their dictionary with them to a place they need to spell correctly?

Re:Complex?

[Mr. Underbridge]

My father believes that APR still stands for "annual percentage rate", when most of the time it actually means "above the prime rate".

I question that, actually. I've *never* seen APR stand for "Above Prime Rate." And if they use it to stand for that they're morons, as that would be insanely confusing.

Re:Not surprising...

[miskatonic alumnus]

There's a joke that circulates among math professors and graduate students: Calculus is where you learn College Algebra.

Re:Complex?

[Angostura]

Precisely; I was thinking that the really shocking way to have spun this story would have been: "Credit card offers are written in such complex English that they are unintelligible to 75% of college students".