THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 7, 1995 TAG: 9501070219
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
More than half the nation's college graduates can't figure out how to use bus schedules, a new report says.
The study, by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., may be the most comprehensive look yet at the abilities of college graduates in America.
It pastes together a smattering of statistics, including results on graduate-school exams and labor surveys. But the most striking results come from a 1992 literacy study of 26,000 adults.
One multiple-choice question, accompanying a bus schedule, asked people how long they would have to wait for a bus if they missed one leaving at a certain time. Only 47 percent of college graduates - and 18 percent of all adults - got the right answer.
And only 11 percent of college graduates - and 3 percent of all adults - reached the highest level of literacy, able to summarize attorneys' arguments.
College graduates are ``certainly more literate, on average, than those who do not go to college, or do not graduate,'' the report says. ``But their levels of literateness range from a lot less than impressive to mediocre to near alarming, depending on who is making the judgment.''
But the study also shows signs of improvement among graduates.
The average ``analytical score'' on the Graduate Record Exam - a standardized test used for entry into graduate school - went up 35 points from 1981 to 1993, even as the number of test-takers rose 47 percent.
And the average score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, used by business schools, went up 19 points during the same period, while the number of test-takers jumped nearly 40 percent.
That's ``positive news,'' said Paul E. Barton, co-author of the study.Typically, when the number of people taking exams increases, scores decline because ``you're usually dipping further down the scale in academic ability,'' he said.
The study also says that the younger the graduates, the higher their levels of literacy.
Several educators offered a mixed read on the findings.
``Those kinds of numbers (from the literacy study) do make you wonder,'' said Russell Edgerton, president of the American Association for Higher Education. ``But you can also grab hold of what you can take to be congratulatory news - the GRE exams. There's data there for everyone.''
Barton, director of the Policy Information Center of the Educational Testing Service, said colleges are taking a broad range of students, many of whom need remedial education. ``You're going to expect to have a fair number graduating who are marginal,'' he said.
But Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said there was no excuse for the low results in literacy.
``These kinds of skills (such as reading a bus schedule) should not be what a college education is about,'' he said. ``. . . But it is beyond me how a student can get into, let alone out of, college without them.''
In the report, Barton acknowledges that the statistics ``add up to a fragmentary and blurred picture . . . about the outcomes of a college education in America.''
But educators say that it is probably the best attempt so far to measure how colleges are doing and that it ought to prod colleges to do a better job determining how their students are faring.
There is no nationwide standardized exam for college students equivalent to the Scholastic Aptitude Test for high school students, and few states, or colleges, give exit exams to seniors.
``We all wish that colleges and universities would come up with clearer ways in which they could tell people what they are doing and what their success rates are,'' said Gordon K. Davies, director of the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia.
``It's not that people (in education) are hostile to it,'' he said. ``They are just not used to the notion. . . . Nobody really asked them to do that until the middle '80s.''
As U.S. secretary of education, William Bennett proposed a nationwide exam for college students. A handful of states, including Florida, already have standardized tests that upperclassmen must pass.
The problem, Davies said, is that ``you would find a great disparity between the graduates of Harvard College and a small community college in southeast Texas. I don't know how they would use the results.''
Instead, the council is compiling a dozen indicators for each college - including job-placement and graduation rates - that it intends eventually to publish. MEMO: OTHER FINDINGS
The ETS report also said:
Among people with the same levels of education, those with
better-educated parents usually have higher levels of literacy.
About three-quarters of employed bachelor's degree recipients were in
jobs related to their field of study in 1991, unchanged from 1985. But
the percentage employed in jobs not needing a four-year degree rose from
37 percent in 1985 to 44 percent in 1991.
Engineering graduates are the most likely to be employed full-time
one year after graduation, at 85 percent. Biology majors are least
likely, at 51 percent.
The average annual salary of bachelor's degree recipients, one year
after graduation, has remained basically flat, going from $21,600 in
1976 to $22,700 in 1991.
The average salary for women is 87 percent the amount for men.
Females get 83 percent as much in social sciences, but 105 percent as
much in history.
by CNB