Posted on 03/13/2015 5:43:39 AM PDT by iowamark
Surprised? So were the researchers who tested and compared workers in 23 countries.
We hear about the superior tech savvy of people born after 1980 so often that we tend to assume it must be true. But is it?
Researchers at Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) expected it to be when they administered a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Sponsored by the OECD, the test was designed to measure the job skills of adults, aged 16 to 65, in 23 countries.
When the results were analyzed by age group and nationality, ETS got a shock. It turns out, says a new report, that Millennials in the U.S. fall short when it comes to the skills employers want most: literacy (including the ability to follow simple instructions), practical math, and — hold on to your hat — a category called “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”
Not only do Gen Y Americans lag far behind their overseas peers by every measure, but they even score lower than other age groups of Americans.
Take literacy, for instance. American Millennials scored lower than their counterparts in every country that participated except Spain and Italy. (Japan is No. 1.) In numeracy, meaning the ability to apply basic math to everyday situations, Gen Yers in the U.S. ranked dead last.
Okay, but what about making smart use of technology, where Millennials are said to shine? Again, America scored at the bottom of the heap, in a four-way tie for last place with the Slovak Republic, Ireland, and Poland.
Even the best-educated Millennials stateside couldn’t compete with their counterparts in Japan, Finland, South Korea, Belgium, Sweden, or elsewhere. With a master’s degree, for example, Americans scored higher in numeracy than peers in just three countries: Ireland, Poland, and Spain. Altogether, the top U.S. Gen Yers, in the 90th percentile, “scored lower than their counterparts in 15 countries,” the report notes, “and only scored higher than their peers in Spain.”
“We really thought [U.S.] Millennials would do better than the general adult population, either compared to older coworkers in the U.S. or to the same age group in other countries,” says Madeline Goodman, an ETS researcher who worked on the study. “But they didn’t. In fact, their scores were abysmal.”
What does that mean for U.S. employers hiring people born since 1980? Goodman notes that hiring managers shouldn’t overestimate the practical value of a four-year degree. True, U.S. Millennials with college credentials did score higher on the PIAAC than Americans with only a high school diploma (albeit less well than college grads in most other countries).
“But a degree may not be enough,” Goodman says, to prove that someone is adept with basic English, can do what she calls “workaday math,” or has the ability to use technology in a job. Curious about how the PIAAC measures those skills, or how you’d score yourself? Check out a few sample math questions, or take the whole test.
Millennials in the Workplace Training Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz0o9clVQu8
We’ve got to strip American universities of taxpayer dollars which they waste on ethnic and gender studies. People who pay for their own schooling or earn private scholarships are actually looking forward.
They are great at using their smart phones and trying out new apps, just watch them.
In my neighborhood my neighbors from India don’t have cable TV< they make their kids study and get good grades.
They moved to my neighborhood for the schools.
This is because all the jobs that would teach young people job skills and work habits have been taken by illegal aliens. And child labor laws prevent kids from working until they are old enough tho drink.
We need less college and more trade schools.
Really? with all this free education and college crap? Amazing, maybe it is because they have no guidance.
We’ve got to return to the days of the fifties when teaching kids.
I was going to take the test, but I can’t use foxfire at work. :( We just hired a bunch of young ones. I don’t know their skill level, but they all seem like very nice kids. So that’s something.
We used to have auto shop classes and metal shop classes and wood shop classes in high school.
Now they teach sensitivity classes.
So we have a whole generation of sensitive numbskulls that don’t know torque wrench from a toilet handle.
Reminds me of the FCC “Third Class Radiotelephone Operator’s License” test I passed in order to be a DJ at my college’s radio station. I figured that anyone who couldn’t pass it was probably too dumb to put their name at the top of the form.
Yeah, but at least they FEEL good about themselves and will expect they can always be taken care of by “someone”.
Seriously, just yesterday we were reading a ghost story in my lower-level 7th grade class, and the novel was set "three years after X character died." We find X character's tombstone with the dates 1869 -- 1884 on it. I say, "So, when is this novel set?"
One kid yells out "1869.".
I say, "No, that's when she was born."
Another kid yells out "1884."
I say, "Okay, that's when she died, and the novel is set three years later...?"
"1890! 1950! 1860!"
Finally one kid concentrates really hard (you can see him get really still, and his eyes start moving back and forth). "1887?"
By this time I'm just ill, and I'm holding up my fingers, counting, "Yes! Look, everyone, see? 1885, 86, 87! That's three!"
And they stare at my fingers with their mouths hanging open and their eyes dull and annoyed, like "what's your point, miss?"
Least educated and less intelligent Perfect little dimocrats
My high school physics teacher owned a construction company and transferred a lot of things from building into his classes. He even took us to job sites and got us to do some of the work while learning. (In those days our parents thought it was great)
We learned a lot of physics basics that way.
Millennials......They’re tech dependent, not technically skilled.
My work has a general qualifying test that I call the stupid test. Had questions like
“Jeff wants to take lunch with his friend Joe. All of Jeff’s friends work in accounting. Jill works in accounting.”
Answer the following statements as true, false, or possible but not enough information given.
Joe and Jill are friends.
Joe works in accounting.
Jeff and Jill are friends.
Jeff works in accounting.
Jill is having lunch with Joe.
Or other questions like Tom has a variety of items he wants to transport to a friends house down the street. Given the following items, what is the best way to do so? He has a 2 gallon bucket, an 80lb anvil, a box of matches, a small wagon, a stack of papers 3” thick, and a hammer.
Literally half the group testing with me flunked it.
The trillion$ of yo’money $pent by “progressives” for “liberal education” (indoctrination?) has paid off handsomely. The lost generation known as millennials know not who George Washington is... but have learned that cops are all racist, and America is “unfair”. Also, while mastery of the iPhone is a skill... it don’t make much of a living.
It could be that the high ranking of some government schools has nothing to do with the school. It merely takes credit for the hard work of after-schooling done by the families.
It has been my anecdotal observation that academically successful children who are institutionalized for the schooling do the same amount of homework at the kitchen table as my homeschoolers did all day. Their parents share similar value and home habits as mine.
Conclusion: Schools don't teach. Kids learn in the home. The institutional school merely provides a curriculum for the child to follow in the home.
I guess that the logic problems I grew up loving, like “Who owns the zebra?”, are passe...
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