I don’t know about you, but I expected to be developed when I went to college.  I expected my kids to become more intellectually capable when they went.

The good news?  I certainly succeeded, as did my kids.

The bad news?  That sort of improvement seems to be no longer the norm.

At least, if you go to some of more “statured” institutions, it seems.  But, at some of the smaller colleges, the data indicate that the students do improve their critical thinking.  (This may explain why so many of the millennials seem to fall for the fake news that abounds on the various social media sites.)

We have already seen the results of the International Assessment for Adult Competency- which include college graduates among other adults.  The assessment reveals that US adults barely reach the middle of the pack (among graduates from around the world) when numeracy (the ability to understand and employ numerical concepts) and literacy are measured.  And, that’s the good news- because when it comes to critical thinking- we are near the bottom of the pack.

But, that is only one measure.  There is a more intensive examination that lets us evaluate the abilities of many US students.  This would be the College Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+), a product of the Council for Aid to Education (CAE), which works with educational institutions, developing tests and criteria that afford measurement of- and therefore the means to improve- learning outcomes.  These institutions include middle school, high school, and college learning centers.  (The CAE also surveys philanthropic giving to colleges and universities, which is maintained in a database.)

The CLA+ provides a measurement of the student’s skill- not their ability to recall information.  This means it assesses quantitative reasoning, scientific capabilities, and critical thinking skills.  Not the sort of results from many other tests that lets students cram- and develop short-term answers; that’s important, because we need long-term thinking for success.  The (roughly 90 minute long) examinations employ newspaper articles, spreadsheets, research papers; the student must critique an argument or make a point based upon the readings.

 

What is unusual is that the CLA+ results have rarely been made public.  But, this year, the Wall Street Journal obtained (and divulged) the results of the testing over the past few years.

Not surprisingly, the CLA+ results mimic the international ranking results. Which probably explains why 50% of employers find that college graduates lack the critical reasoning skills to succeed in the workplace.

Of course, many institutions complain that the students from the various schools have vastly different capabilities- and some of the more prestigious ones claim the results are skewed because their matriculants already enter their institutions with developed critical skills- which can’t be much improved upon over the student’s tenure.  (This is akin to the problem I had with the Evelyn Woods Reading Dynamics program- if you come into the program reading way more than 1000 words per minute, it will never be able to double or triple your reading speed.)

And, yet…What I found most interesting is that the average 4 year graduation rate was about 54% for all the schools.  Which means that  the student loads up on more debt to graduate- and still lacks the critical thinking skills to succeed in business (and life?).