Findings on college graduates disturbing

[TrainTrac]

Comments about college grads' lack of compentcy and skills were brought up in another thread, and rather than have that thread taken off on a tangent, I thought I'd start a new one. I found those earlier comments interesting, because this very subject has been in the news recently. Here are two such stories. I think that the case could be made that these grads aren't getting the quality foundation of education prior to entering college, and that is why these surveys are showing such poor results. It is somewhat troubling...

Findings on college graduates disturbing

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- At least 20 percent of U.S. college graduates are unable to do fundamental computations, says a national survey released Friday.



The survey done by the Washington-based Pew Charitable Trusts for the American Institutes for Research says these students completing 4-year degrees, and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees have only basic quantitative literacy skills.



That means they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies.



The study found there is no difference between the quantitative literacy of today's graduates compared with previous generations. But the current graduates generally are superior to earlier graduates in other forms of literacy needed to comprehend documents and prose.



The study surveyed 1,827 graduating students from 80 randomly selected 2-year and 4-year public and private colleges. The complete findings are available on the AIR Web site, air.org.



"The surprisingly weak quantitative literacy ability of many college graduates is troubling," says Stephane Baldi, who directed the study.



Copyright 2006 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20060120-13563900-bc-us-collegestudents.xml#

Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline

Survey's Finding of a Drop in Reading Proficiency Is Inexplicable, Experts Say



By Lois Romano

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 25, 2005; A12



Literacy experts and educators say they are stunned by the results of a recent adult literacy assessment, which shows that the reading proficiency of college graduates has declined in the past decade, with no obvious explanation.



"It's appalling -- it's really astounding," said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. "Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That's not saying much for the remainder."



While more Americans are graduating from college, and more than ever are applying for admission, far fewer are leaving higher education with the skills needed to comprehend routine data, such as reading a table about the relationship between blood pressure and physical activity, according to the federal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.



Experts could not definitively explain the drop.



"The declining impact of education on our adult population was the biggest surprise for us, and we just don't have a good explanation," said Mark S. Schneider, commissioner of education statistics. "It may be that institutions have not yet figured out how to teach a whole generation of students who learned to read on the computer and who watch more TV. It's a different kind of literacy."



"What's disturbing is that the assessment is not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels," he added.



The test measures how well adults comprehend basic instructions and tasks through reading -- such as computing costs per ounce of food items, comparing viewpoints on two editorials and

 

[Bill V]

It would be interesting to hear how those percentages break down by major. I suspect that B.S. and engineering degrees fare significantly better than B.A.

 

[Casey B]

I'm a junior in college and currently all of my classes are online. It suprises me that a lot of people in college, including the one's who are close to completing 4 years, has such poor grammar. If their writing skills are this bad, I can only imagine what their speech is like. The majority of the time people write the same way they speak. This can be bad and I'm not an exception. I'm not sure about other locations but it seems to be a factor here in the south.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

The problem isn't one of colleges but of high schools, IMHO.



College shouldn't be the 13th grade. If you don't have literacy skills when entering college then high schools have failed you and colleges aren't to blame.



Oh, and Casey said:

It suprises me that a lot of people in college, including the one's who are close to completing 4 years, has such poor grammar.

Shouldn't that be "have such poor grammar"?



TJR

 

[Michael Cacioppo]

I think "haveum such...." is much more correct.



It all boils down to lowering our scholastic standards and letting Johnny (and or Jane to be PC) advance before achieving their required skills. Teachers and schools are measured on their "PASS/GRADUATE" rate, not their "FAIL" rate. Tests have been made less difficult to keep the PASS/FAIL ratios high.

 

[Tom R]

Oh, and Casey said:



Quote:

It suprises me that a lot of people in college, including the one's who are close to completing 4 years, has such poor grammar.



Shouldn't that be "have such poor grammar"?

My grammar skills are horrible at best, my understanding of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and all the rules associated with english are terrible. That was my worst subject in high school. I never learned it all after high school either, so, now if I have to write something that I really want to be sure is proper grammar wise, i'll type it out and run it through MS word and do the Spelling and Grammar check.



I ran the above quote through MS Word and apparently the "has" is correct instead of the "have", but the spelling of "suprises" is incorrect, it should be "surprises".



I'm not nitpicking, I just thought it was funny that Tom caught what he thought was an error with the "has" vs. the "have", and MS Word said it was OK, but caught the spelling error. If we were to nitpick every single post on here, there would never be any time to talk about our ST's.



It could be alot worse, people could be typing like this.... I lOvE mY SpOrT TrAC mOrE tHaN WoRdS CaN SaY <3 It's only going to get worse over time and I contribute alot of it to the technological information age we are in now. Teenagers use cell phones and instant messengers and places like MySpace.com to type and communicate to each other and have shortened and abbreviated everything they can. It is their own language and evolves to basically ignore or not put very much emphasis on the rules of proper grammar just as Ebonics does.

 

[Dre L]

The problem isn't one of colleges but of high schools, IMHO.

Damn right. I went to a great private high school. When I got to college, I was paying $300 per credit for current events and remedial english. I was accused of cheating because I turned in a paper I wrote in high school, and it was better than anything they had ever seen. The professors were little more than disgruntled public high school teachers.



Now I'm not bashing public schools, I attended some very good ones most of my life. When I got to the 9th grade though, it was apparent that I needed to find a better school and went private. It turned out to be the worst private school ever, I went there to avoid bad teachers, gangs, drugs, and violence, but found them all wearing a jacket and tie. So after having a 99 average and fighting every day of the 10th grade, I decided to retire to a good high school for the 11th and 12th, before I couldn't have an 11th or 12th.



This school was much better, although my 99 average dropped to a 65, which I fought to bring up to a respectable, passing 88. See, 65 is passing everywhere else in NYC, at this school it was a 75, and the standards of learning were higher.



Speaking of public schools, it turns out that the city colleges are better and cheaper than many of the private colleges.

 

[Dre L]

I'm being haunted by Bill Ford.

 

[TrainTrac]

It suprises me that a lot of people in college, including the one's who are close to completing 4 years, has such poor grammar.



I ran the above quote through MS Word and apparently the "has" is correct instead of the "have", but the spelling of "suprises" is incorrect, it should be "surprises".

Not meaning to nitpick here either, but don't always trust MS Word to be correct. If you look at the sentence in question, take out the middle part, and you have the basic sentence, "It suprises me that a lot of people in college has such poor grammar." In this case, the word in question, "has", is being used with "a lot of people", which is plural, so "have" would be the correct word to use in this sentence.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Thanks, TomR,



But I am pretty sure that MSWord is WRONG in this and being confused by the sentence fragment in the middle bounded by the commas.



Try this in MSWord:

It surprises me that a lot of people in college has such poor grammar.

And you will see that MSWord flags "has" as a grammatical error and suggests "have".



Just say it out loud. Should it be:



a lot of people have



or



a lot of people has



And don't be confused by the stuff bounded by commas in the middle.



Oh, and I nitpicked on this because I thought it was ironic that Casey was lamenting about fellow college students grammar, and put in his own seeming grammar error. I didn't catch the typo (not a misspelling but a typo IMHO) because I guess I had only my grammar checker running. ;-)



Besides, if I really wanted to nitpick, I would have discussed the use of the word one's instead of the more appropriate those, and the fact that the ones in this case wouldn't be possessive.



Sorry Casey.



TJR

 

[Josh Langel]

I agree with TJR 110%!



I graduated from a private high school and currently attend a private college where I am earning a BS degree in Film and Business.



I will say that a majority of kids have really terrible grammar (not to say mine is the best).



In high school, I had four years of writing/grammer classes, along with literature history and writing scripts for the stage. I have also finished ENC1101, ENC1102, and a semester in scriptwriting.



I don't know how other schools are teaching writing skills or comprehension to kids, but I will guarantee you that it's terrible.



A lot of kids today are just plain "under educated;" they barely understand the basics.



Scary? Hell yes it is.

 

[Johnny O]

Schools are more concerned with students' self-esteem and teaching political correctness than readin', writin', and 'rithmatic. I taught for 10 years part-time at a local college, some students had okay grammar and some were awful.

 

[Jenn D]

not a hijack - just a side convo....



Josh are you in Orlando now?

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Bill Ford said:

I was accused of cheating because I turned in a paper I wrote in high school...

Anyone else think that sounds funny?

 

[Josh Langel]

Jenn,



Yes. I have been in Orlando since October.

 

[Jenn D]

Thanks for the call!!! Geez!! Think you're too good for a fellow ST'er now that you own a Tundra? Turncoat! :lol:



Seriously, give me a call some time. Scott and I found some awesome lakes in the area to fish in, you'll have to come with us. We are also planning some Sebastian Inlet trips too.

 

[Josh Langel]

That sounds awesome, Jenn! Thanks!



I don't have your # anymore, I threw it away and never wanted to talk to you again... uh.. woops... no really, I've been through like three phones in the last 6 months, so I don't have your # anymore, can you email it to me?



Later!

 

[Jeff C]

Gorman said that he has been shocked by how few entering freshmen understand how to use a basic library system, or enjoy reading for pleasure. "There is a failure in the core values of education," he said. "They're told to go to college in order to get a better job -- and that's okay. But the real task is to produce educated people."

I have trouble using our library here at Auburn. But then again, I've never used anything here that I couldn't find on the internet. As for pleasure reading? Since 6th grade, we've always had "summer reading" and the books are always awful. Then the books used in the classroom are just as bad. I take no pleasure in reading because it was forced on me when I was younger. Don't get me wrong, I'm an excellent reader when I have to, I just don't like to. It's like when a radio station plays a song WAY too much. They take something you may like, or even kinda like, and keep shoving it down your throat until you hate it. That's how it is with reading nowadays, I've just had enough, when I can get a weeks worth of reading done in 2 hours in a movie theater, why read?



Also, how many of these surveyed students have ALL English speaking teachers. Of my five classes, I have one teacher who spoke English as his first language, and he teaches music...granted I'm in engineering so it's mostly math and physics, but I know that there are some English teachers here who didn't start out speaking English.

 

[Rodger Tellefson]

That info. is down right scarry. How in the heck to they even pass the entry exams? Then we wonder why the U.S. cannot compete in the world economy.

 

[Dre L]

Bill Ford said:Quote:



I was accused of cheating because I turned in a paper I wrote in high school...





Anyone else think that sounds funny?

Regards, Tom

Funny how?