<p>The fact that business majors did not fare well didn’t entirely surprise me. At least at my college business majors tended to do more collaborative work and had many more presentations - the idea was to build their public speaking/overall communication skills and to learn to work with a diverse group of peers to get the job done. While they did that, I had 15-20 page papers due in each of my psychology courses. There was still group work, and usually at least one presentation per semester, but the written component typically carried the most weight in my courses as opposed to presentations in business courses.</p>
<p>I don’t think one skill is more important than the other - we all need to be good speakers, thinkers, and writers. But the students have to want to improve. More and more students are attending college because “it’s the thing to do after high school,” or because they can’t find a job. They aren’t just going to learn and expand their views - they’re going to party, move out of their parents homes, and hopefully earn a killer salary at the end. But there’s so much more you need to put into the experience to get that result.</p>