Americans Think We Have the World’s Best Colleges. We Don’t.

[Junior]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/upshot/americans-think-we-have-the-worlds-best-colleges-we-dont.html

 

 

Yet a recent multinational study of adult literacy and numeracy skills suggests that this view is wrong. America’s schools and colleges are actually far more alike than people believe — and not in a good way. The nation’s deep education problems, the data suggest, don’t magically disappear once students disappear behind ivy-covered walls.

 

The standard negative view of American K-12 schools has been highly influenced by international comparisons. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, periodically administers an exam called PISA to 15-year-olds in 69 countries. While results vary somewhat depending on the subject and grade level, America never looks very good. The same is true of other international tests. In PISA’s math test, the United States battles it out for last place among developed countries, along with Hungary and Lithuania.

----

Like PISA, Piaac tests people’s literacy and math skills. Because the test takers were adults, they were asked to use those skills in real-world contexts. They might, for example, be asked to read a news article and an email, each describing a different innovative method of improving drinking water quality in Africa, and identify the sentence in each document that describes a criticism common to both inventions. The test also included a measure of “problem-solving in technology-rich environments,” reflecting the nature of modern work.

As with the measures of K-12 education, the United States battles it out for last place, this time with Italy and Spain. Countries that traditionally trounce America on the PISA test of 15-year-olds, such as Japan and Finland, also have much higher levels of proficiency and skill among adults.

[Creighton Duke]

I don;t know if I agree with the measures. It is very difficult to compare universities from country-to-country due to the fact that many will promote more of a liberal arts education while others will be more focused on specialized learning/training.

 

Consider a liberal arts major who takes one math class in college. Why should her math skills be adept with minimal, lower-level math training?

 

In contrast, the STEM major who took English 101 & 102 and then was done with any kind of reading or literature; why should he be any good in this area?

 

I'm not saying that I disagree at all with the assumptions and I very much believe them to probably be true, but more valid measures may be needed to make conclusive observations.