A study entitled The National Survey of America’s College Students sampled over 1,800 college students and finds low skill levels to be prevalent among them. A story about the study is available here.
I find this interesting for several reasons, foremost among them the considerable damage it does to the often-heard contention from the education establishment that it is imperative to get more and more young people into college because we have entered an “information age” in which it is necessary for more and more workers to have the highly advanced skills that can only be obtained through a college education. Ahem. The US economy has been doing quite well despite the fact that many of the people with college degrees have a hard time doing even simple mental tasks.
Maybe they get smarter after they’re on the job. The incentive to learn things is much stronger when one’s income depends on it.
And maybe many jobs that now “require” a college degree don’t actually demand very much mental acuity. The fact that many college graduates who are hired are not particularly skillful supports the idea that we are suffering from a bad case of credential inflation.
