Educational standards ??? What standards ?? 10

[RDK]

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=11300002RKP5

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food. Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

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.

How did these illiterates ever get out of high school?

Presumably some of them are graduating with engineering degrees.


It doesn’t say much for the future of a knowledge based society does it?

Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.

Anyone want to explain a complex technical idea to a group made up of these people?

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[JoeTank]

Scary isn't it! I would hope that there aren't any engineering grads in that motely group. Since the article said "most", I am hoping that the balance of the students could do the math. Maybe job interviews for entry level engineers should include a physics and math quiz?

Steve Braune
Tank Industry Consultants

http://www.tankindustry.com

 

[ewh]

I read a similar artical this weekend. In that one, they stated that engineering students did score better than the general student population. It's still a scarey situation, though.

 

[RDK]

I did some research and the situation doers not appear to be too different in Canada as it is portrayed in the study as in the US. (No hard data but some comments from Canadian university educators.)

You have to assume that some of these illiterates are in business or political science.

They will be the managers and political leaders guiding the economy and our countries into the period of our retirement.

Sleep well knowing that your future is in their hands!

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[Twoballcane]

I’m sorry, but these students sound like spoiled kids that go to these high priced colleges. Their parents do everything for them and the students don’t have to worry about money or how to manage their life. Basically their parents will take care of them just like if they (the students) were still in jr high school.

But in the student’s defense, you should not judge their ability to take care of them selves to their technical knowledge (which is what they went to school for). I know some scientists and engineers who have difficulty balancing their check books, but can do some great analysis work.

I wonder how the kids that goes to the public colleges far in this study. I went to a public college were most of the kids were struggling to put them selves thru college (me included), so money, food, books, a place to live, just trying to figure things out so that they can continue with their education does any better.

 

[dford]

I don't think we should be surprised by this report. I suspect we would get similar results from testing government employees, elected officials, sports and media people.

Education focused on test standards gets this kind of result.

The people who write the policies and standards seem to think that factoring polynomials is a critical skill for the general high school student. Mensuration, basic probability, compound interest, data plotting, and other usefull concepts suffer.

Why is it that the high school football coach is the algebra teacher?

Doug

 

[MrMojito]

None of this should surprise anyone. Colleges in the USA are businesses first and educators second, if at all. Their goal is to maximize the number of students because this is how they make money. They do this by dumbing down the entry requirements and the curriculum. As a society, we've decided to go for a quantity of superficially educated people over a quality small group.

 

[RDK]

The report included private and public schools. Sorry twoballcane but it appears that you misread the report.

Education used to be about teaching people to think. There was a strong emphasis on putting the material into a context that required a person to take a little from course A a little from course B and a lot from course C to come up with an answer.

Now the trend appears to be to simply teach the material as if it existed in a vacuum and did not relate to any other facet of what was learned in other courses. You can solve the quadric equation but can you recognize when it is the appropriate equation to be used to solve a problem and then find the correct coefficients then solve the problem?

A truly educated person would not only have the tools necessary for problem solving but the ability to recognize which tool is the correct one for a specific problem and then apply it correctly so that the answer was meaningful.

Combine that with social promotion in the grade and high school system and a lack of true performance based criteria for passing and we get the mess we have now.

Perhaps the British system where you had to take exams at various stages of your education to get slotted into a stream that invariably lead to a trade or a profession is the answer.

I wouldn’t like to see a system where a person was marked for life based on a test taken at age 16 but something has to be done to ensure that only those with the adequate skills and educational background gets the benefit of an expensive university education and the rights and responsibilities that goes with such an education like entry to a profession.

While engineering students would be better than the average there must be something wrong with a system that produces graduates who cannot pass the FE exam. From what I’ve seen of this exam any student with adequate knowledge and ability to be an engineering graduate and candidate for the profession should be able to pass the exam easily on the first try with proper review and study. Yet about one in four fail it.

You have to also remember that the FE exam is by its nature not a comprehensive exam requiring a student to integrate knowledge from a wide variety of sources to get the correct answer but is a series of questions from a variety of subject areas.

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[Heckler]

My opinion about these of reports of high school students not meeting the minimum to graduate is this lies on the parents lack of involvement and discipline. public schools are tooled to deal with two types of students....those that excel and those that fail to meet the minimum. Anything in between just falls through the cracks.


Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
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"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford

 

[Ashereng]

Maybe the survey is flawed?

There is insufficient information to determine what the questions were (if you ask a leading question, you get a leading answer), who the test subjects are (random and through out all the universities in the US?), what the sample pool size is (how many institutions were sampled), what the accuracy claim of the results are, etc.

I am a bit suspicious that should this be true (taken at face value), then what is happening to the rest of the non first world nations with even less access to education?

This article certainly makes for attention grabbing.

After using some of my "complex literacy" skills to understand the arguments of this newspaper's editorials/publication's article, comparing it to some general observations, adding in some pesonal critical thinking, I have come to the conclusion I am skeptical of the claims of this survey, as it applies to the general population of the US (and/or Canada).

 

[MadMango]

I saw a clip on the evening news, one of the questions was, "What is a better credit card rate, 3.9% or 21.5%?" It didn't sound like a leading question to me...

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[CajunCenturion]

Here are some interesting juxtapositions of comments from within the article.

But overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation.

"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and non-partisan group.

If college student literacy is significanly higher than that of adults across the nation, then where is the highly educated population against which the college students fall short?
----

Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.

I'm having a little difficulty dealing with "adults with similar levels of education" and "college students had superior skills". Perhaps it would make more sense if we knew what "similar levels of education" actually means in this context.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Ashereng]

MadMango,

I didn't see the clip, so I will defer to your judgement.

Oh, by the way, is the 3.9% and 21.5% interest on the same basis? All else being equal, I am surprised that only 20%-30% of a 4-year degree candidate would not pick 3.9% as being better for them (21.5% being better for the card issuer).

 

[Twoballcane]

Sorry RDK, I was writing off the cuff to respond to your blurp of the report. Now that I have read it…are you concerned that if the engineering student can not balance their check book that they can not be an effective engineer in the future?

Just an interesting thought, can people who can balance check books or figure out how much a pound of meat cost learn how to do heat, fluid, or vibration analysis on rocket equipment?

I think this assessment is unfair. The American Institutes for Research are targeting young adults that have been pampered by the college and parents. The colleges are built so that the college students do not have to think about such things so that they can focus on their studies. The parents already set up the finances for the school and any other supplies that the student will need. The student just has to show up and do well.

Like many young adults, once they graduate and finally earning a sizable income, they realize that it is important to know how to balance their check book and know how to shop for their groceries to stretch that dollar that they have just earned

“I wouldn’t like to see a system where a person was marked for life based on a test taken at age 16 but something has to be done to ensure that only those with the adequate skills and educational background gets the benefit of an expensive university education and the rights and responsibilities that goes with such an education like entry to a profession.”

I’m sorry RDK, did we go from…book smarts does not equate street smarts… to …only book smart people should be able to advance to higher education?

 

[DaveVikingPE]

Well, the really smart folks in the US don't need school to make a lot of cash. Rock stars, movies stars, self-made men (and women) abound!

They don't choose engineering as a field because it's too hard and the payoff ain't there.

How come the "stupidist" people end up being the managers? Is it because they're too dangerous to be given the real work or are they actually too smart to have to do the real work?

These kinds of surveys or studies don't mean a thing. If you are "smart" you will find a way to make money, by hook or by crook. And let us please not forget that crime pays. It pays extremely well. High risk, sure, but while you were learning differential equations and hoping that the hard work would pay off, that kid who dropped out is making a mint selling crack.

This is why a free society is scarey. Unless we (I am speaking for those Americans who I think I represent...) execute criminals on a regular basis, it will always pay better to steal a dime than work for a dollar. Unless a genuine, life-stiffling stigma is attached to poor performance in school, those who squeak by will end up in the workforce.

While I'll take the former, the latter might mean that late bloomers don't get a chance...

I, for one, would rather live in a society that offers infinite chances at academic achievement than one that locks you into a career path because of a grade you got when you were twelve.

All that aside, the market will weed out the bad apples: stop going to stores that hire imbiciles, etc.

 

[RDK]

The report stated sample size and the methodology used.

It was not a poll type of study where there could be leading questions but one using accepted literacy methodology to determine levels of literacy.

And yes I would expect an engineer to be able to balance q checkbook, know that 3.9% is a better interest rate to pay than 21% and be able to read and discriminate on the information provided.

Just like I expect one to be able to read the report and know that it encompassed both public and private schools, was conducted in accordance with the test used by the National Assessment of Adult Literacy and included 1,827 respondents.

Anyone else see the irony that engineers, supposedly educated and literate people are having a hard time reading the article on literacy and commenting on it?

We do all know what irony is, don’t we?

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[MrMojito]

DaveViking,

I've been inside maximum security prisons several times while engaged in engineering work on behalf of my employer. After you've been inside for just a few hours, you won't think that crime pays. You'll probably cry on the way home like I did. And I'm not a liberal.

 

[Twoballcane]

I was thinking about this article and it struck me that there is something wrong. I looked up the definition of literacy and it means “a person who can read and write” (a simple definition), for the article to say that these college students are not literate is completely false, the students can read and write. It seems the person that did this article or study is using the term wrong. It is not literacy that the kids are having problems, but comprehension of matters outside college life.

 

[zdas04]

My son is just starting his second semester in college and he sent an instant message last night that was too funny not to share here, when asked how his first week went he said:

My calculus teacher is nice, but I'm sure he's speaking Greek. I like my language teacher, but I think she's speaking German. My Chem teacher knows way too much Chemestry, but I'm pretty sure he's speaking Latin. My English teacher is kind of strange, but it looks like she's speaking ... Oh yeah.

I find it hard not to look hopefully on the future.

David

 

[Ashereng]

Rick,

I didn't get a chance to read the article. I went by what was on your OP.

Now that I read your link, it does seem that the survey was conducted using standard methods, and with a test that at least has been used by other agencies.

I am still skeptical of the results. I still do not see the level of illiteracy that is claimed.

Oh! Ok. So what is irony?