The AP reports on a shocking new study that found that many students lack the problem solving skills that are important in life and in the workplace.
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.
It is astounding that so many students have trouble with these kinds of skills. How many of these students performed poorly on the tests but could still set up an Internet account at MySpace.com or use email? Maybe for some of theme it was more of an unfamiliarity with the topics than a lack of skills. Let's hope so because these are the kinds of skills that employers basically assume college graduates possess.
