Grads balance equation, not checkbook

Well, the results are in. And quite frankly, we’re all a bunch of dumbasses.

A study was… Well, the results are in. And quite frankly, we’re all a bunch of dumbasses.

A study was released by the American Institute for Research which showed, in very graphic and very specific detail, that American undergraduate students are just plain stupid when it comes to a whole host of seemingly simple, real-life skills.

I don’t know who these stupid undergrads are, or where they live, because most of the college kids I deal with are class-act sort of people, the ones who could ace any question thrown at them about trains heading on the same track at different velocities.

They could tell you when the trains would collide, where the trains would collide, how many casualties two trains on the same track colliding would produce and how exactly to treat them.

Just the same, numbers don’t lie. The study found that more than 50 percent of students at four-year schools, such as the one you and I write the checks to, don’t have the necessary skills to engage in “complex literacy tasks,” such as reading a table, comparing credit card offers or finding any meaning in a newspaper editorial.

The author of the study, Stephane Baldi, voiced a great deal of concern that this nation’s undergraduates are being sent forth into the world with only a limited understanding of how to reason out a restaurant bill or how to figure out a credit card offer.

To Baldi I have only one response: Who cares?

Our colleges aren’t training people to live in the “real world.” So what? When did it become college’s jobs to instruct students in basic living situations?

People are acting more and more like college is the terminus of our social, philosophical, emotional and academic development. By the way, Ms. Baldi, terminus is an SAT word, and I was reading at an 8th-grade level by the time I was in 7th grade. Do you really want to mess with that? But I digress.

Colleges never claim to be real-life-education centers. They do claim to prepare you for jobs – I don’t think that claim is in question here. A school doesn’t claim to make you feel better, or feel fulfilled, or make friends or even have fun. All those things are extras that certainly do occur during college – and they all begin and end with a person going out and doing it.

Yet for some reason, college graduates are probed and poked to discover what their weaknesses are. Granted, it might be college itself that aids the delay of maturity and responsibility sometimes. But college graduates still have the best jobs of any segment of society.

The study even confirms this truth to a degree, finding that college graduates command far higher rates of literacy than the general public.

The truth is that college has never claimed to be anything more than it is – a way to get the tools to get a specific job. Sure, I might come here and dabble in a few other areas, but for the most part, I am studying the art of writing, and also anthropology.

If you gave me a map and told me to locate Uruguay on a map, I could do it, but only because I’m quite a nerd. But if you can’t, you shouldn’t be labeled as dumb.

If you go to a restaurant and can’t calculate the tip for a meal without a calculator, or a smart friend, you shouldn’t be called stupid. If you have difficulty in getting to the truth behind credit card offers, you shouldn’t have your education called into question, as the study suggests.

College is the chance for us to find ourselves a job we can enjoy. Ask any working person without a degree – they’ll tell you that college is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Learning to live independently and competently in the world is important. But we should recognize where exactly it is that that comes from – living out on your own, outside of the dorms. And all those people who are here, wondering when they are supposed to start to feel fulfilled and enlightened, that only comes if you go looking for it. It’s an extra side order off the menu, it doesn’t just come with the sandwich.

Pinning all that other stuff on college is unfair. With all the expectations and pretensions we have about college, it’s a wonder anybody feels that they’ve learned anything at all while here. We need to do a better job at remembering why exactly we came here to college – to get a good job.

As an English major, Sam Morey has no such expectations. E-mail him at smorey88@hotmail.com.