Illiteracy In College

Attending college has become a vital factor to be successful in American society. Since pregnancy, parents start creating a plan so that they will save enough money to afford sending their kids to college. Higher education is the cornerstone for obtaining a better quality of life in which basic and self-actualization needs are met. Every year the number of people attending college increases. In fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), during fall of 2016, about 20.5 million students were expected to attend American colleges and universities (2015). Nevertheless, the importance of attending college rests upon the questionable assumption that colleges degrees grant success. In this paper, I will present and analyze some objections to the idea that …show more content…
However, functional illiteracy, which is defined as “someone who cannot read well enough to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level” has become a current issue in American society (Schlechty). Having a higher education is not a guarantee of knowledge. Many students end up college lacking comprehension, critical thinking, or problem-solving skills. The education system that is used in college is so mechanical that students know how to do a problem algorithmically, but they do not know how to interpret or explain what the findings mean. Students are not fully competent or skilled in doing or using what they learn. Many of them neither see beyond the professor’s lecture or their notes nor are encouraged to do so. A study of literacy on college campuses showed that “more than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks”. “That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials” (NBC news,