Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs

[CountDeMoney]

Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs
Forty Percent of Students Seen Ill-Prepared to Enter Work Force; Critical Thinking Key
By Douglas Belkin
Wall Street Journal

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.

On average, students make strides in their ability to reason, but because so many start at such a deficit, many still graduate without the ability to read a scatter plot, construct a cohesive argument or identify a logical fallacy.

"Even if there is notable growth over four years, many students are starting at such a low point they may still not be proficient at the point of graduation," said Jessalynn K. James, a program manager at the Council for Aid to Education, which administered the test. The CAE is a New York-based nonprofit that once was part of Rand Corp.

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.

The results are "consistent with our work," said Richard Arum, co-author of "Academically Adrift" and "Aspiring Adults Adrift," which chronicles the paucity of studying and intellectual development on college campuses and the consequences after graduation.

"Colleges are increasing their attention to the social aspects on campus to keep students happy; there is not enough rigorous academic instruction," he said.

A survey of business owners to be released next week by the American Association Colleges and Universities also found that nine out of 10 employers judge recent college graduates as poorly prepared for the work force in such areas as critical thinking, communication and problem solving.

"Employers are saying I don't care about all the knowledge you learned because it's going to be out of date two minutes after you graduate ... I care about whether you can continue to learn over time and solve complex problems," said Debra Humphreys, vice president for policy and public engagement at AAC&U, which represents more than 1,300 schools.

The CLA+ is graded on a scale of 400 to 1600. In the fall of 2013, freshmen averaged a score of 1039, and graduating seniors averaged 1128, a gain of 89 points.

CAE says that improvement is evidence of the worth of a degree. "Colleges and universities are contributing considerably to the development of key skills that can make graduates stand out in a competitive labor market," the report said.

Mr. Arum was skeptical of the advantages accrued. Because the test was administered over one academic year, it was taken by two groups of people. A total of 18,178 freshmen took the test and 13,474 seniors. That mismatch suggested a selection bias to Mr. Arum.

"Who knows how many dropped out? They were probably the weaker students," he said.

Ms. James said first-year students expect to sit for a battery of tests when they arrive at college, but seniors had little incentive to take the exam. The CAE attempted to statistically correct for the selection bias, but because the test wasn't administered to a single group over four years, there were inherent limitations.

"It's accurate to the extent possible," she said.

The results revealed that the greatest cognitive growth occurred at midsize schools—between 3,000 and 10,000 students—in the Western part of the country. Students who made the most significant gains were likely to be minorities and low-income students, but their scores were also lower on average to start.

What are schools in the West doing better than everybody else?

"We don't know," said Ms. James. "We're going to look at the curriculum, but it may be the cultural aspect of the student experience."

Why are so many college students failing to gain job skills before graduation?
By Jeffrey J. Selingo January 26
washington post

If you watch college sports on television, you've probably seen the ad for Enterprise Rent-A-Car featuring former college athletes working behind the counter at your nearby Enterprise location. Enterprise – which hires more entry-level college graduates annually than any other company in the U.S. — likes recruiting college athletes because they know how to work on teams and multitask.

"We see a lot of transferable skills in athletes," Marie Artim, vice president of talent acquisition at Enterprise, told me.

Even so, Enterprise, like many employers, still finds today's college graduates severely lacking in some basic skills, particularly problem solving, decision making, and the ability to prioritize tasks.

"This is a generation that has been 'syllabused' through their lives," Artim said, referring to the outline of a class students receive at the beginning of a college course. "Decisions were made for them, so we're less likely to find someone who can pull the trigger and make a decision."

Bosses, of course, have long complained that newly minted college grads are not ready for the world of work, but there is a growing body of evidence that what students learn — or more likely don't learn — in college makes them ill-prepared for the global job market. Two studies in just the past few weeks show that the clear signal a college degree once sent to employers that someone is ready for a job increasingly has a lot of noise surrounding it.

One study is the result of a test administered to 32,000 students at 169 colleges and universities. It found that 40 percent of college seniors fail to graduate with the complex reasoning skills needed in today's workplace. The test, the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, is given to freshmen and seniors and measures the gains made during college in critical thinking, writing and communication, and analytical reasoning.

The results of the test found little difference between those students who graduated from public colleges and those who went to private schools. Not surprisingly, students who graduated from the best colleges did better than everyone else on the test as seniors, but their gains since taking the test as freshmen were actually smaller than those students who graduated from less elite schools.

The big difference between the skills of graduates depended on their college major: Students who studied math and science scored significantly higher than those who studied in the so-called helping and service fields, such as social work, and in business, which is the most popular college major.

A second study released this month found a similar disconnect between what employers need and the readiness of college seniors. In a pair of surveys by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, would-be graduates said college armed them with the skills needed for the job market. But employers disagreed. On a range of nearly 20 skills, employers consistently rated students much lower than they judged themselves. While 57 percent of students said they were creative and innovative, for example, just 25 percent of employers agreed.



If you're a parent of a high-school senior or prospective college student, these findings might make you wonder if there is any hope for a good job after college graduation. There is, but whether a student launches after college depends largely on what they do while in school. Just getting the sheepskin no longer guarantees a good job.

Employers tell me that students who dedicate time and effort to their major or an outside-the-classroom activity, secure multiple internships during their four years, and take on leadership roles are more likely to possess the skills needed for the workforce than students who drift through college. The best skill that students can learn in college is actually the ability to learn.

"People know how to take a course. But they need to learn how to learn," said John Leutner, head of global learning at Xerox. The reason he said so many workers take time management courses is that while they were in college someone else set their priorities for them. "College graduates now," he told me, "move into a contextual job, not a task-based job."

The best preparation for today's job market is a mix of classroom learning that can be applied in real-world experiences, or a combination of academic experience and practical experience. "Our best employees are problem solvers and are able to weave everything they know together," said Artim, of Enterprise. "They can think on their feet."

What these recent studies show is that too many students are focused on the wrong things in college. Too many of them are worried, for example, about picking the right college major for the job market, when it really doesn't matter what they major in as long as they are rigorous in their studies as well as activities beyond the classroom.

There is also too much emphasis these days on picking a practical field of study, which is why business is the most popular undergraduate major. But employers need people who are broadly educated and have practical skills. Too many colleges are failing to provide that guidance and those opportunities to students while saddling them with debt they won't be able pay off in the unemployment line.

One of the country's most-sought-after employers, Google, has found that it is increasingly hiring people without college degrees because the signal of the credential is no longer as clear as it used to be that someone is job ready. If colleges don't provide the mix of academic and practical experiences that students need and students fail to take advantage of them, pretty soon we'll see other employers looking for alternatives to the college degree as well.

[crazy canuck]

"Colleges are increasing their attention to the social aspects on campus to keep students happy; there is not enough rigorous academic instruction,"

I think there is a lot to this.  But I don't think it is just a problem with Universities becoming less demanding.  Grade inflation has created a situation where, as the article notes, incoming students start with such a significant deficit of academic skills coming out of high school that it is difficult to make up the ground in a University setting.

[garbon]

Hardly surprising given how necessary it is to have a college degree these days.

[Berkut]

I would be surprised if the results were otherwise - you cannot dilute something the way we've diluted the college education without having an impact on the overall quality.

Plus, isn't this just a long way of saying that college graduates still have a lot to learn about how the real world actually operates? Hasn't that always been the case?

[DGuller]

It's been a well-known fact for centuries that our current generation is not quite measuring up.

[crazy canuck]

I would be surprised if the results were otherwise - you cannot dilute something the way we've diluted the college education without having an impact on the overall quality.

Plus, isn't this just a long way of saying that college graduates still have a lot to learn about how the real world actually operates? Hasn't that always been the case?

You should read the article more carefully.  The claim isn't that they don't know things about the real world.  The claim is that they are not learning basic reading and logic skills.  Seedy actually bolded that part to make it easy for you.  Ironic isn't it? 

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.

[Malthus]

It's been a well-known fact for centuries that our current generation is not quite measuring up.

[CountDeMoney]

It's been a well-known fact for centuries that our current generation is not quite measuring up.

Yes, just when I'm at the point where I would gleefully use a story like this as another indictment of Generation Assburger, I read something like this:

People keep sticking their hands in snowblowers without turning them off first, data show
Washington Post Wonkblog

Since 2003, roughly 9,000 Americans have lost a finger (or two, or three) to a snowblower-related injury, according to estimates derived from Consumer Product Safety Commission data. Overall, about 15 percent of people who go to the E.R. as a result of a snowblower injury end up getting fingers amputated.




These numbers come from NEISS (the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System), a national probability sample of hospitals in the U.S. Here's how it works: "Patient information is collected from each NEISS hospital for every emergency visit involving an injury associated with consumer products. From this sample, the total number of product-related injuries treated in hospital emergency rooms nationwide can be estimated." And lucky for us, they have a unique category for snowblower-related injuries, with subcategories for diagnoses -- including amputations.

The year-to-year fluctuation in these numbers is probably related to the number of severe snow storms in the U.S. The average snowblower amputee is about 50 years old and male -- very male. In fact, of the 197 snowblower-related amputation cases in the database between 2003 and 2013, only seven -- or about 3.7 percent -- involved women. This reflects a couple of things: first, that men are probably more likely to operate snowblowers than women, and second, that women are typically more sensible about these things than men.

Why are men losing their fingers? For the simple reason that they keep sticking their hands in snowblowers while they're still running. Here's a sampling of the case descriptions from recent years:

    "50 year old male had finger caught in snowblower amputating it unclogging blower"
    "40 year old male partially amputated 3 fingers clearing out snowblower"
    "36 year old male was cleaning his snowblower while it was running and got right hand fingers caught in it"
    "63 year old male amputated fingers in snowblower when it clogged"
    "57 year old male thought his snowblower 'disinlodged,' stuck hand in and got finger caught in blade"
    "52 year old male reached into snowblower to clear snow and amputated two fingers and brought finger pieces in"
    "20 year old male was using a snow blower and inserted hand into chute because it was clogged and injured finger"

You get the picture. Overwhelmingly, men reach into their snowblowers to unclog or fiddle with something without first, you know, turning the machine off.

Overall, an average of about 5,700 people hurt themselves snowblowing each year. Aside from amputations, snowblowers cause burns ("64 year old male in shorts draining case from snowblower when it ignited and burned lower legs"), hand fractures ("43 year old male open fractured hand, put hand in snowblower chute"), garden-variety lacerations ("34 year old male lacerated finger when he put hand in a running snow blower"), and general aches and pains ("72 year old male moving a heavy snow blower developed low back pain").

Looking at the big picture though, snowblower injuries are relatively rare -- in 2013 there were about three times as many vacuum cleaner related injuries, four times as many injuries caused by snow shovels, and eight times as many lawnmower incidents.

[grumbler]

You should read the article more carefully.  The claim isn't that they don't know things about the real world.  The claim is that they are not learning basic reading and logic skills.  Seedy actually bolded that part to make it easy for you.  Ironic isn't it? 

So your argument is that basic reading and logic skills are not part of "how the real world operates" (which was Berkut's MOE)?  I think we've identified the problem! 

[crazy canuck]

You should read the article more carefully.  The claim isn't that they don't know things about the real world.  The claim is that they are not learning basic reading and logic skills.  Seedy actually bolded that part to make it easy for you.  Ironic isn't it? 

So your argument is that basic reading and logic skills are not part of "how the real world operates" (which was Berkut's MOE)?  I think we've identified the problem! 

You really are trying your best to pick a fight aren't you.

[grumbler]

You really are trying your best to pick a fight aren't you.

If pointing out how absurd your nitpicks are counts as "picking a fight," then yes.  I may not be as practiced in sneering as you, but I learn quickly.

[LaCroix]

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.

should we blame the schools? 

[Caliga]

It's been a well-known fact for centuries that our current generation is not quite measuring up.

In fact I remember reading something along those lines in the works of Tacitus or Suetonius.   IVVENESINVTILES

[grumbler]

It's been a well-known fact for centuries that our current generation is not quite measuring up.

In fact I remember reading something along those lines in the works of Tacitus or Suetonius.   IVVENESINVTILES

IIRC, Socrates is on record as saying the same thing (though what is attributed to him may be apocryphal) .

[Ed Anger]

Young people suck.