Colleges are basically first and foremost businesses. They're not in the business of holding people back because they don't have a certain set of skills. ... I think that now that the data is out there, I would hope colleges maybe offer more remedial classes that try to fill in those gaps. |
Even though we still have a lot of areas where they're not doing well in college literacy, at least they're not doing worse than their parents and grandparents. |
It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things. |
The only thing they can do is very rudimentary tasks like finding a point on a map. |
The research team was surprised to find out more than 50 percent of four-year students were not in the proficient category and 75 percent of the two-year students were not. The proficient category does involve some of the more complex literacy tasks, but some that we would expect them to do. |
The surprisingly weak quantitative literacy ability of many college graduates is troubling. A knowledgeable workforce is vital to cope with the increasing demands of the global marketplace. |