Posted on 01/17/2015 6:24:17 AM PST by grundle
Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students.
The test, which was administered at 169 colleges and universities in 2013 and 2014 and released Thursday, reveals broad variation in the intellectual development of the nation’s students depending on the type and even location of the school they attend.
... many still graduate without the ability to read a scatterplot, construct a cohesive argument or identify a logical fallacy.
The exam, known as the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, measures the intellectual gains made between freshman and senior year. The test doesn’t cover subject-area knowledge; rather it assesses things like critical thinking, analytical reasoning, document literacy, writing and communication—essentially mimicking the baseline demands for professionals.
“These are the skills that are important no matter what you are doing; if you’re serving on a jury or looking for a good candidate to vote for, these are highly transferrable skills,” Ms. James said.
The test comes at a time of rising tuition and student debt and a broad rethinking of the value of a college degree in a changing job market. Last month, President Barack Obama spelled out plans for a college-rating system that aims to assess how well schools prepare students for the work world, among other criteria.
The 40% of students tested who didn’t meet a standard deemed “proficient” were unable to distinguish the quality of evidence in building an argument or express the appropriate level of conviction in their conclusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Considering the quality of liberal ‘professors’ we’re lucky they can read.
I agree with you that it would be interesting to see the numbers broken down by major.
Yep. It’s better to make a good living as a plumber than to get a worthless degree and work at Starbucks.
Yes - a line can be drawn through the dots. There are different ways to do it. The one that is most useful is a least squares line. That means all the dots are closest to the line in terms of their squared values. It sounds weird but with a visual it would be very clear.
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