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Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

                Melissa Barrera              Chris Elliott               Zach Lee
                Christian Palmer             Blake Whitaker       Kristen Young

College students decide value of education 

The first literacy study to target the skills of graduating students found that more than half of students at four-year colleges — no matter their field of study — lack the literacy to handle seemingly mundane real-life tasks, the Associated Press reported Friday.

The study found that most students could perform moderately challenging tasks such as identifying a location on a map, but they often lacked "proficient" skills — those needed to perform more complex tasks. Many students could not understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure.

Those results are more than a little frightening.

College students, the intellectual elite of yesterday, have become the intellectual mediocrity of today. 

The "college lifestyle" may account for some of the deeply saddening results. Perhaps the partying that comes with being immersed in an environment dominated by young people and alcohol is partially to blame — something that does not affect UH as much as it does other schools. 

UH is largely a commuter school, and as such, many students need to work one or two jobs and pay their own bills regularly. That kind of real-life experience undoubtedly helps students improve their pragmatic literacy.

That said, the results are still disheartening at best. The only silver lining to be plucked out of the study's storm clouds seems to be the fact that college students had an average literacy score significantly higher than other adults. But even that can be misleading. Adults who did not make it past middle school were also included in the group of "other adults."

As depressing as the results are, they also serve as a reminder that a college education is only worth as much as each individual experience, and it looks like the responsibility to get a quality education has fallen to each individual student as well.