Posted 1/21/2006 03:39:00 PM by Douglas

To anyone wondering, it's not just your imagination. College graduates are getting dumber

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

The survey examined college and university students nearing the end of their degree programs. The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.

What do you expect? Math is hard.