New study shows college students lack common skills

[Agathon]

Having said that: there are a lot of brilliant people who come through U of T. They aren't the problem: it's the dross at the other end.

[monolith94]

I do the same thing (i.e. paying off my credit card bill in full each month) and it's been fine. Once I accidentally paid off everything but fifteen cents, so I had interest on the fifteen cents...

I don't get any of the fancy rewards that Asher and Krazyhorse seem to get though. I'm considering switching to a new card.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Agathon


They aren't stupid. They know that the university will jump on us if we fail more than a certain percentage of students (you have to submit a grade count -- I did last week). Since this percentage is usually covered by the people who don't hand in all the work, people who hand in a bunch of crap know that they will probably pass.

We simply no longer have the power to mass fail students, and they know it.

There are a few professors who buck the trend, like my dissertation supervisor. He won't take any crap at all, but he has tenure and a habit of telling university officials to get ****ed if they don't like it. I TAed for him a few times and did a few lectures when he was away. It was a refreshing experience.

Mass failing:

[Traianvs]

damn I belong the dross too then

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Agathon
None of this surprises me.

Because of our new right wing overlords, colleges are compelled to treat students as customers instead of students.

I was going to say something, but then I realized i) I'm on Aggie's ignore list, and ii) in the aggiverse, socdems are probably rightwingers anyway.


Anyway, concerning the OP:

* As everyone already mentioned, credit card offers are meant to be confusing. If we somehow improved tuition to the point most people got them right, they'd obfuscate them even more.

* Most westerners believe they can get happily thru life with an atrocious knowledge of maths, and the available evidence would seem to indicate they're right.

* How the hell can these skills be common if college students lack them, and the rest of the population are even worse?!?

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Flubber
Regarding credit card offers . ..

I'm a lawyer and I have to read those things two-three times to understand them. They purposely try to confuse things with ambiguous language so that you don't realize that the introductory interest rate only applies if you complete your form in Latin and it is received on a Tuesday.

Seriously, the offers are written so you think its a better deal than it actually is. Once you read the details, you will find that the introductory rate applies to very little.

My favorite part is "terms subject to change without notice."

[St Leo]

WTF is an ounce?:P

[Dr Strangelove]

I wonder about these surveys. What if the people responding were told that the survey was part of their coursework and that if they did poorly it would lower their grades? Would they do better on the surveys? How many people blow them off or actually try to do poorly because they don't care or think it's funny? Could culture affect this aspect of mass testing? Would people belonging to a more individualistic or rebelious culture be "less motivated" to do well on this type of survey>

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I wonder about these surveys. What if the people responding were told that the survey was part of their coursework and that if they did poorly it would lower their grades? Would they do better on the surveys? How many people blow them off or actually try to do poorly because they don't care or think it's funny? Could culture affect this aspect of mass testing? Would people belonging to a more individualistic or rebelious culture be "less motivated" to do well on this type of survey>

Yeah, as a busy college student, if I had to take a survey like that at the end of class I would just breeze through any lengthy question and just guess so I can get to browsing Poly.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by St Leo
WTF is an ounce?:P

[Patroklos]

understand the arguments of newspaper editorials

Common problem amongst the college educated on this site.

Education would be better served if we simply abolished fees and gave the faculty back the power to fail people who don't work or who should really be somewhere else.

That is not from the right side of the aisle there Aggie, because we all know the "nobody should win little league games because we are all winners" is a stereotype of the right winger archetype.

If we want to increase college results we need to abandon the concept that everyone deserves a college education. The simple fact is that most colleges have dumbed down the course work to increase the people that are capable of passing. I bet most of the nation’s valedictorians would not have survived Oxford or any German university of 1890.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Usually, as a former professor, I'm happy to jump on the today's-students-are-idiots bandwagon.

But I must say this: my parents, neither of whom were accountants or bankers or anything like that, assumed responsibility for teaching me about personal finance. They taught me how to balance a checkbook, how to calculate a tip in a restaurant, and how credit cards worked. That was true of everyone I knew. How these things became the province of schools I don't know (after all, it's "personal" finance), but I don't know of anyone who depended upon a school to learn them.

This is a failure of parenting.

[Patroklos]

And to clear this up when I say "abandon the concept that everyone deserves a college education" I am not saying kick out the poor, I realize that there is problem there and am not really sure how to fix it.

Though I would start by putting a cap on the money that can be spent on athletics, and have those funds put into real scholarships.

[Dis]

I hate these articles. It just makes me bitter that they have a degree and make more money than me. . All the stuff mentioned in the article is easy to figure out. You'd have to be a moron not to know that stuff.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dis
I hate these articles. It just makes me bitter that they have a degree and make more money than me. .

I heard that plumbers make loads more than college grads. Is that true?