<p>a large number of people seem happy enough to jump on bandwagon and bash the skills of the youngsters. but shouldn’t y’all be usin’ them critical thinking skills that your superior old fashioned educations gave you (the one without the tvs and the mtv and whatnot), to actually look at the statistics used to back up the blatantly inflammatory claims made by the writer. one annotated example, don’t want too much non-fiction or them kids’ll fall right to sleep reading this, from the article:
“Todays college students are generally dumber than their predecessors [blatantly inflammatory claim]. An article in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 30, 1997) reported that a bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947. [as mentioned by previous poster, potentially goes the relative supply of each degree in the two different populations, drastic changes in the social structure of the country dilute the comparison (on gender and racial issues) The American Council on Education found that only 15 percent of universities require tests for general knowledge; only 17 percent for critical thinking; and only 19 percent for minimum competency. [and if we aren’t testing, they can’t be competent, right? and how many tests were they doing in the 40’s anyway?]”
the author appears to be making a lot of noise to make some noise/make a buck, its his job, he’s gotta move product, but i wouldn’t call this an academic contribution for the sake of greater knowledge and the intrinsic value of learning, and whatever else used to be so important but has been tossed to the wayside by the paris hilton worshipping generation of incompetent idiots racking up departmental honors at harvard.</p>