In reading through the report, I came across this statement: “The average literacy of U.S. college students was generally the same regardless of how long students had been in college, their enrollment status, or the number of postsecondary institutions they attended.”
That seems to suggest that “the college experience” for most students doesn’t do anything to raise their level of literacy. In Beer and Circus, Murray Sperber argues that for many collegians, the four or more years it takes to get a degree are marked far more by fun and frolic than by serious intellectual work. Apparently, we now have some solid evidence to support that idea.