Re: paleonet "Graduated but Not Literate"

[Bill Chaisson <chaisson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>This recent survey of American college and university graduates 
>bears on discussions we've had here.  Any such data for UK, German, 
>French, etc, students?    The causes of the decline are debatable 
>but it confirms that the better (or more) education, the better the 
>test scores (i.e., graduate students did better than undergraduates, 
>although both fell over the comparison periods).   The decline may 
>be due to the success of US colleges and universities in recruiting 
>students from less well prepared groups and they can't catch up or 
>do the work as well.  This has other implications for the production 
>of scientists and how ID, creationism, UFOs, astrology, "alternative 
>medicine", TV, etc, etc, contribute to student education from K-12 
>through graduate degrees.
>
>Forwarded by a friend:
>
>>Does this surprise any of the teachers out there? A whole nation of easily
>>manipulable sheep is being produced.

The article about the survey doesn't really give much information 
about how the scores are calculated so we are told that "significant 
changes" have occurred between 1992 and 2003, but we just have to 
take their word for it.

Looking at the "prose literacy" scores (the only data presented), I 
see that the difference between the scores of a high school graduate 
and a college graduate was 57 in 1992 and 52 in 2003.  Since they are 
both declining and gap is narrowing, that means that the ability of a 
college education to provide increased prose literacy has declined in 
the past decade.  The prose score for a college grad has declined 11 
pts over 11 years and that of a high school grad 6 pts., which is to 
say at nearly twice the rate. As a college education has gotten 
significantly more expensive since then, I am slightly distressed by 
this apparent trend.

I have never given a multiple-choice test, but then I have never had 
a class with more than 40 students in it.

Bill
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_____________________________
William P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Dept. Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, New York  14627
607-387-3892