I had a job interview yesterday (crossing fingers), and the guy who was interviewing me spent a significant chunk of the time denigrating the recent crop of college grads. “They can’t write, they don’t know anything, and they can’t think critically” was how he put it.
It made me feel awkward because I’m not that far removed from college, only eight years. I can’t believe that college students have changed dramatically over that time, so I took some umbrage. When I graduated from college*, I could write damn well. And even though I didn’t become a genius and probably didn’t know everything I was supposed to have learned, I wasn’t completely deficient. I feel like my college degree was worth something.
But perhaps what he said is true, and I just can’t think critically enough to see it.
Have college students become dumber through the years? Or is this a big case of “back in my day, we were better!” coming from an ole fogey.
*to be honest, college didn’t teach me how to write. High school did.
Well, that might be part of it; I was expected to already be able to write by the time I got to college, I think, and since I had an abysmal high-school education, I couldn’t, really. I could write fairly correct sentences and make myself clear (thanks to lots of reading, not because anyone taught me how), but I couldn’t write a proper paper or think of things to say. I struggled along, and in grad school could suddenly do it easily. (I graduated from college in '95, btw.) But I think I missed a lot in college through sheer ignorance; I’ve been playing catch-up on my own.
As far as I have been able to figure out, the quality of writing ability in Americans has been heading slowly downhill for years. One professor whose books I love said that her students were bright kids, full of ideas, but had never been taught the basic tools of language or thought, so they were ill-equipped to think clearly or to express themselves when they did.
I’m sure it’s quite varied between schools, but we consistently hear complaints from businesses and such that their new hires have to be taught basic English skills all the time. Maybe businesses have been saying the same thing for 50 years, but that still doesn’t say much for our schools; they have us for 12 years, and “how to write a sentence/paragraph/paper” is supposed to be a central part of the curriculum.
The only difference there is in college kids these days is that a lot more kids go to college than they used to. This tends to dilute the population as a whole. However, if you look at the population of any semi-prestigious college, the quality of the students has actually gone up a great deal over the last few decades. This is especially true for schools like Harvard that switched over to more merit based admission open to the most talented of all students. George W Bush and John F Kennedy wouldn’t stand a chance of getting into their alma mater today through the traditional channels and neither would many of the older alumni of many prestigious schools because the competition and requirements are higher than ever.
The fact that the complaints exist, however, does not prove that most people can’t actually write a sentence.
I mean, where are all these college grads who are incapable of writing reasonably good English? I hear the claims, but I’ve never met one. I know a lot of graduates of universities and community colleges, and they can all write complete sentences. I’m sure you’ll find exceptions, but is it really all that commonplace?
And what businesses actually teach their new hires “basic English skills?” I work with 100+ different businesses every year, across a wide range of disciplines, and in every case I’m specifically examining their training and qualification records. I have never, not once, seen a business that spent a nanosecond of time teaching college grads “basic English skills.” I have never heard of such a thing at any other business. I cannot imagine what business could even afford such a thing, or what business would not simply refuse to hire such a person. I simply don’t believe a business would bother, or would even have the time to do this. What sort of moron would spend money on that when you can just hire different people?
I’m almost 50. In my grandparents’ day, it was common and even acceptable for kids to drop out of high school, if they were going into bluecollar fields of work. A high school diploma was required for most whitecollar jobs, the same way a college diploma is now required. These days, though, even jobs with very few requirements will prefer a HS grad rather than a dropout. The world has become more complex, and the simpler jobs have become more automated.
IMO, “critical thinking” is just a buzz phrase. Most people can’t think along critical paths. I don’t think it can be taught. You either do or you don’t. We called it common sense.
College only gives one a licence to learn one’s chosen trade.
RickJay is absolutely right. You are more mature than the kids he’s seen right out of college.
As far as being able to write goes, he may be right. I think the information age has cheapened the ability to put thoughts on a page.
I keep in touch via email with a number of my college friends (graduated 1985) and we represent a good cross section of people. Everyone can write clearly, use punctuation, and spell.
I work kinda-sorta in the publishing business, where you’d think these basic skills would be mandatory for getting a job, but in general those under 27 or so can’t spell for squat, and on more than a few occasions I’ve had to call people to get them to explain their email, which i couldn’t make heads or tails of.
Written communication seems to me to be woeful in recent grads. The strange thing is that the standards for getting accepted into a good college are so much higher now.
I don’t know if the quality has changed as much as people have become more specialized.
When I taught technical writing, all my students were supposed to have university degrees or college diplomas. Yet it wasn’t unusual for some students (but nowhere near all) to be hopelessly at sea when it came to syntax. The idea of a topic sentence was new to them, and punctuation was all over the place.
The reason why was that these people had spent their educations doing things that didn’t require much, if any, written communication. They concentrated on things like math and science, and any written reports they did for school generally weren’t graded for grammar and punctuation. Now that they found themselves in a private business, this stuff counted, and they were totally lost. Terrific programmers and engineers, top-of-the-line in many ways, but lousy writers.
Part of my job was to raise their skills, and I did the best I could. Most tried to learn, and I’m pleased to say that their efforts paid off. No, they would never be great writers, but their writing would at least be acceptable to their employers.
I teach college writing, but it's a real struggle most of the time, since so many of the students arrive from high school without being academically prepared for what awaits them. Hell, let's add math skills, knowledge of history and science, and more; writing isn't only area where people are lacking. I can't tell you the number of times I've told people to put their Works Cited in alphabetical order, or that the faculty mailboxes are in alphabetical order by last names, only to discover that they have no clue what "alphabetical order" means.
I also work in the assessment center, helping to score placement essays, so I see it from different angles. Whatever they're learning in high school, it sure isn't grammar.
To be fair, the students who enjoy reading books are far better writers, on average, than the non-readers. There's an idea: pick up the book and put down the Wii! And let's take it a bit further: eat something nutritious instead of bag after bag of chips; they're not exactly brain food.
Sorry for the mini-rant.
Yup, there is no doubt the quality of college students has changed. The major University I attend has seen their best freshman class come in every year for something like the past 10 years. Incoming freshmen today are, on average, much better prepared than their predecessors even 10 years ago. They take more AP classes, taken classes at the local JC, and have higher SAT scores. There’s no doubt that your typical student today would wipe the floor with your typical student even 10 years ago.
Street smarter from what? Being constantly monitored and told how special they are by helicopter parents, surfing MySpace, watching My Super Sweet 16 and playing XBox all day?
Most literature I’ve read on the subject pegs Gen Y / Millennials as more “wired”, used to working in teams, wanting to make friends with coworkers, have a “can-do” attitude. They constantly look for feedback and are positive and confident, ready to take on the world.
Quite frankly, as a hiring manager at my firm, I’m sick of all the gushing I see in the media about how hardworking and motivated “Millennials” are. Yes, they are comfortible with technology, but they need constant handholding and positive feedback. They mope and shut down when you correct them. And yeah, their professional writing ability sucks.
I don’t know if their quality has changed, but they are different from students 10 years ago.
I also think the problem is specialization. My friends who major in the sciences in general can’t write or remember their history for crap. I’m in the social sciences because I utterly failed the hard sciences due to my lack of math skills, and I get the feeling my classmates are afraid of science as well.
You can get by through excelling in one field, even if you’re hopeless in the others.
As **Shagnasty **explained in his previous post, this is because far more students are taking the SAT than before. In 1941, when the test was initially calibrated, only 5% of students were taking the test (and its safe to say they were among the best educated). Also despite the recentering, the absolute score necessary to get into top colleges has consistently risen.
Or, if you prefer a test that hasn’t been recentered, look at LSAT scores. There is near consensus that incoming students to top law schools are much more qualified than their peers of several decades ago.
You should put some stock in that assessment. The SAT was re centered because more students were taking it as mentioned above bringing down the average. There was nothing unexpected there. The only unbiased evidence we have about population intelligence across time is standardized tests and those have shown an incredible trend called the Flynn Effect. No one knows what exactly to make of it but a general IQ point rise of 3 - 5 points a decade means that an average student in 1960 would now be most likely referred to special education classes. It is a very big difference and shows that students today are more talented than ever. How that plays out overall, I can’t say. My alma mater also posted some statistics recently that made me cringe thinking that maybe me or my wife would not have been welcome in recently incoming classes.
So? The fact that they were dropping previously doesn’t change the fact that they have been rising.
You have no idea what you are talking about. It doesn’t matter if you take an AP class in high school. All that matters is if you pass the AP test at the end of the year. That is rigorously controlled, and ensures that students passing the test are competent to a college level standard in the subject. What they are talking about eliminating is AP courses that do not adequately prepare students for the AP test. iIt has nothing to do with grade inflation, and I never said anything about grades.
We’re not talking 1941, we’re talking ten years ago. I doubt there is much of a difference in the number and quality of students taking the test between then and now.
