This is embarrassing.
According to an article in today's New York Times, "the average American college graduate's literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday."
"Declined significantly" is too mild a term. Embarrassingly plummeted would be more appropriate.
Get this: the National Assessment of Adult Literacy was administered by the Dept. of Ed in 1992, when 40 percent of nation's college graduates (college graduates!) scored at the "proficient level" of literacy. Only 40 percent!
The test was administered again in 2003, and guess what -- this time around, only 31 percent of college grads "were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences." About three percent (or 800,000) college grads "demonstrated 'below basic' literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose."
And these people were allowed to graduate from college?!!
Granted, literacy increased for blacks and Asians, to 33 and 54 percent, respectively. Still paltry results, but at least somewhat better than the 1992's figures of 29 and 45 percent.
Do you know what this means? Millions of dollars in student aid and college loans are being wasted on higher education that fails to bring 69 percent of the students to a proficient literacy level. And not only does the education system fail to actually educate these folks, it deceives them into believing that they have a higher education by handing them a diploma... one sheet of paper with big letters that 800,000 of them would have a really hard time even understanding.
Don't take me wrong. I know about social and economic disparities in this country that give better education to some than to others. But this is college level we are talking about!!! First of all, I would think that a person would have to, oh, I don't know, take some tests, write a few essays, and get acceptable high school grades to go on. Even if that does not happen, and someone "slips through the cracks," should not our institutions of higher learning catch them? Shouldn't they say, "Whoa, buddy! You can't really read or write, but we'll teach you! That's what we're here for! Ed-u-ca-tion!"??
... But perhaps I am naive. After all, why bother? It's not like we need "big words" to send a text message... or watch the, like, totally rad MTV programming... or for that matter, understand our Commander in Chief when he tells us that our stratigery in Iraq is going good.
Friday, December 16, 2005
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2 comments:
Now a days, you need a grade point average of 4.9 or higher to get into bottom tier schools like New Jersey Tech.
The GPAs have never been higher and students have never been stupider.
I smell a red-herring.
1) Princezz, you should've discussed this on Restless.
2) Our educational experiences trhough college must have been quite different, because very few retards were admitted to UVA.
3) I'd be interested to see how this study was conducted. Did the study's authors control for undergraduate major? Increase in the size of the college graduate population? Changes in literacy standards and testing at the high school and college level?
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