Saturday, January 21, 2006

America's World-Class College Education System

A recent study by the American Institutes for Research found the following (not?) shocking evidence that our knowledge-based, "first world" economy is a house of cards:

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not 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.

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.


The best part of this report? It included the following table that, if their findings are correct, most of us won't be able to understand anyway!



They really ought to have called USA Today for a lesson in colorful pie charts...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now I understand the current prevelence of incompetent leadership in politics, business, media, education, and many other areas of modern American life. The issue is NOT that they are stupid, it's that WE are TOO stupid to know any better than to put dimwits in charge of our country, our future, and our lives.

Geoff said...

understand the arguments of newspaper editorials...

Nooooooooo...

But I'm sure everyone involved would get an A+ for supermarket bitching and complaining.