Working as I do on a college campus, I find this study's results to be entirely disrespectful of the caliber of college students.
Here's the kind of canards the authors present as a representative view of college students:
WASHINGTON -- 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, a study found.
The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills - no matter their field of study.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map.
On behalf of College Students everywhere, I find myself obliged to speak up in their defense against this egrigious evaluation.
Sure, I see college students running around on campus in January, "The Cold and Rainy Month", dressed in dungarees and a t-shirt, but they have their book-bags to keep them warm.
Yes, there young women on campus who haven't yet learned that their body shape suggests they should NOT dress themselves in tight-fitting blue-jeans, short tops which allow their waist rolls to overflow the waistband of their trousers, and should absolutely NOT be showing their "Thongs", but who among us would criticize their determination not to sacrifice style in the cause of comfort? What are they going to college for? To get an education, undistracted by chills and shivering in class? Nonsense, they have their priorities.
Granted, they tend to ride their bicycles in the dark and the rain without benefit of safety devices such as headlights, and they cut in front of cars during the rush-hour without concern for the likelyhood that they may not be readily visible to commuters who are driving with fogged-up windshields, but they should be congratulated for their natural assumption that their fellow students are completely 'situationally aware' of the probability that crosswalks, sidewalks, and (rarely) bike lanes are occupied by bicyclists.
The authors of the study should ignore the fact that the parking lots near undergraduate dormitaries (usually occupied by students in the 18-20 year-old range) are cluttered with empty, squashed beer cartons.
Personally, I don't for a moment give credance to the near-anocdotal evidence that the student parking lots, filled to overflowing at the beginning of each term but with several parking spaces available at the end of the term, leads inexorably to the conclusion that students are flunking out of college. Rather, I prefer to assume that this is an indication that the students are becoming more involved with the Green movement, and eschew the use of Privately Owned Vehicles (eg: "Classic Cars", "Mom's Cars", and F350's and Beemers) for their day-to-day conveyence in favor of buses, skateboards, bicycles and Public Transportation.
We have accepted without criticism too many studies which suggest that students come to the collegial environment without basic academic, social and 'survival' skill. I say it's time to take the logical step needed to completely discount these accusatory, HURTFUL studies.
Stop funding the studies.
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