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Title: American Millennials are among the world's least skilled
Source:
Fortune
URL Source: http://fortune.com/2015/03/10/ameri ... mong-the-worlds-least-skilled/
Published: Mar 11, 2015
Author: Anne Fisher
Post Date: 2015-03-11 17:31:34 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 27572
Comments: 77
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.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 70.
#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
Regardless of how education improves and school budgets increase, this generation and future generations will continue to be underachievers and poor choice makers. It's got nothing to do with IQ or quality of education. It has everything to do with the libtard "equality" mindset. There is no reason for children to excell, for they are instantly regarded as good as their peer and excuses are made for their ineptness. Then, these entitled little "it's not my fault" children grow up and spawn even a lower quality child.
By "libtard" I assume that you're referring to the underachieving libertarians who belittle the need for a quality higher education.
Meaning, any liberal minded person that feels people are equal. They aren't. Are you one?
No, I'm an engineer. Although when measured on this scale, lower capabilities are indeed on the "left" and greater capability on the "right", this does NOT apply to any particular political ideology that an individual may espouse.
Generally speaking. Are blacks smarter then whites?
Generally speaking, I don't believe skin pigment affects intellectual capability. However, there are also environmental/cultural factors that can skew the results. "Smarter" in one culture may be "not so smart" in another. It all depends what you mean by "smarter." And of course health/nutrition & training of infants & younger children in their formative years can lead to a greater disparity as to who is "smarter" when they get older.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson Since you used a bell curve, was wondering if you had read book by same name. If not, maybe you can familiarize yourself with the guy in link above. What studies/books have you read that have formed your opinions on this subject?
My undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering is based upon the pioneering work of Frederick W Taylor and Frank & Lillian Gilbreath. Work Measurement / Time Study / "piece work" incentive pay plans are fundamentally based on use of the Bell Curve. For instance, the "base" pay rate is established as 100% for the "average" worker. (analagous to having a 100 IQ)... But with an incentive pay plan, an "average" worker should be able to exert extra manual effort and achieve a 2-sigma (25%) increase in output, thus earning 25% more pay over the base rate. But since everybody is different, some people might earn only 15% over base while others might earn 30% more, depending on their individual effort and capabilities. It's pretty basic stuff. But when conducting a motion-time study on a worker, you have to train yourself to ignore any preconceptions you might have if the worker is black, white, hispanic, male, female, young, old, fat, skinny, tall, short, or whatever... All you're really doing is judging the rythm of the motion, whether it's "fast" or "slow" so you can "normalize" the data that you are observing. It's an acquired skill... kinda like a quarterback rolling out of the pocket and trying to hit a wide receiver running a slant in the opposite direction. LOL! Practice it enough, it becomes second nature.
Umm, maybe you might wish to answer the question?
Which question?
The question is, where did you get the information used to have the opinion, that I think you do. Because I'm not real sure what your opinion is TBH. You sorta keep dancing. Do you believe, that blacks and whites over the entirety of the population, are equally intelligent? If so, what studies lead you to this?
You see, some people can figure out things on their own. Without getting it from someone else. It is called intelligence. The IQ test measures ability to solve set of puzzles provided by the corporate authors of IQ test, nothing more nothing less. High IQ means that you are a good puzzle solver or efficient corporate drone.
Ok,we get it. You don't have a high IQ. So what? Millions of people live perfectly happy and successful lives that are in the same boat you are. There are all sorts of career fields open for people like you. Take advantage of what you have and quit whining about what you don't have because we are getting tired of hearing about it. If you were as smart as you think you are,you would understand that life ain't fair,but the people that work the hardest at improving their lives seem to have the most "luck".
Ok,we get it. You don't have a high IQ. How did you conclude that I am not good in solving puzzles or playing video games? Here is one for you:
I don't. I conclude you don't have a very high IQ because you think crap like that proves you do,because you are a leftist,and because of the enormous chip on your shoulder.
Don't get overexcited. Puzzle solving is not the most important aspect of intelligence. Nerds who do nothing else and have no time to wash often are quite dumb. Either way here comes some stuff on correlation between political views and skill in solving puzzle set: ======================== Conservatives exhibit less cognitive ability than liberals do. Or that's what it says in the social science literature, anyway. A 2010 study using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, for example, found that the IQs of young adults who described themselves as "very liberal" averaged 106.42, whereas the mean of those who identified as "very conservative" was 94.82. Similarly, when a 2009 study correlated cognitive capacity with political beliefs among 1,254 community college students and 1,600 foreign students seeking entry to U.S. universities, it found that conservatism is "related to low performance on cognitive ability tests." In 2012, a paper reported that people endorse more conservative views when drunk or under cognitive pressure; it concluded that "political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought." So have social scientists really proved that conservatives are dumber than liberals? It depends crucially on how you define "conservative." For an inkling of what some social scientists think conservatives believe, parse a 2008 study by the University of Nevada at Reno sociologist Markus Kemmelmeier. To probe the political and social beliefs of nearly 7,000 undergraduates at an elite university, Kemmelmeier devised a set of six questions asking whether abortion, same-sex marriage, and gay sex should be legal, whether handguns and racist/sexist speech on campus should be banned, and whether higher taxes should be imposed on the wealthy. The first three were supposed to measure the students' views of "conservative gender roles," and the second set was supposed to gauge their "anti-regulation" beliefs. Kemmelmeier clearly thought that "liberals" would tend to be OK with legal abortion, same-sex marriage, and gay sex, and would opt to ban handguns and offensive speech and to tax the rich. Conservatives would supposedly hold the opposite views. Savvy readers may recognize a problem with using these questions to sort people into just two ideological categories. And sure enough, Kemmelmeier got some results that puzzled him. He found that students who held more traditional views on gender and sex roles averaged lower on their verbal SAT and Achievement Test scores. "Surprisingly," he continued, this was not true of students with anti-regulation attitudes. With them, "all else being equal, more conservative respondents scored higher than more liberal respondents." Kemmelmeier ruefully notes that "this result was not anticipated" and "diametrically contradicts" the hypothesis that conservatism is linked to lower cognitive ability. Kemmelmeier is so evidently lost in the intellectual fog of contemporary progressivism that he does not realize that his questionnaire is impeccably designed to identify classical liberals, a.k.a. libertarians, who endorse liberty in both the social and economic realms. So how smart are libertarians compared to liberals and conservatives? In a May 2014 study in the journal Intelligence, the Oxford sociologist Noah Carl attempts to answer to that question. Because research has "consistently shown that intelligence is positively correlated with socially liberal beliefs and negatively correlated with religious beliefs," Carl suggests that in the American political context, social scientists would expect Republicans to be less intelligent than Democrats. Instead, Republicans have slightly higher verbal intelligence scores (2–5 IQ points) than Democrats. How could that be? Carl begins by pointing out that there is data suggesting that a segment of the American population holding classical liberal beliefs tends to vote Republican. Classical liberals, Carl notes, believe that an individual should be free to make his own lifestyle choices and to enjoy the profits derived from voluntary transactions with others. He proposes that intelligence actually correlates with classically liberal beliefs. To test this hypothesis, Carl uses data on political attitudes and intelligence derived from the General Social Survey, which has been administered to representative samples of American adults every couple of years since 1972. Using GSS data, respondents are classified on a continuum ranging from strong Republican through independent to strong Democrat. Carl then creates a measure of socially liberal beliefs based on respondents' attitudes toward homosexuality, marijuana consumption, abortion, and free speech for communists, racists, and advocates for military dictatorship. He similarly probes liberal economic views, with an assessment of attitudes toward government provision of jobs, industry subsidies, income redistribution, price controls, labor unions, and military spending. Verbal Intelligence is evaluated using the GSS WORDSUM test results. Comparing strong Republicans with strong Democrats, Carl finds that Republicans have a 5.48 IQ point advantage over Democrats. Broadening party affiliation to include moderate to merely leaning respondents still results in a Republican advantage of 3.47 IQ points and 2.47 IQ points respectively. Carl reconciles his findings with the social science literature that reports that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives by proposing that Americans with classically liberal beliefs are even smarter. Carl further reports that those who endorse both social conservatism and economic statism also have lower verbal IQ scores. "Overall, my findings suggest that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans," concludes Carl. If the dumb, I mean socially conservative, Republicans keep disrespecting us classical liberals, we'll take our IQ points and go home. As gratifying as Carl's research findings are, it is still a deep puzzle to me why it apparently takes high intelligence to understand that the government should stay out of both the bedroom and the boardroom.
There are no replies to Comment # 70. End Trace Mode for Comment # 70.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latestthat 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.”
#2. To: GrandIsland (#1)
It has everything to do with the libtard "equality" mindset. There is no reason for children to excell, for they are instantly regarded as good as their peer and excuses are made for their ineptness.
#3. To: Willie Green (#2)
(Edited)
By "libtard" I assume that you're referring to the underachieving libertarians who belittle the need for a quality higher education.
#7. To: GrandIsland (#3)
Meaning, any liberal minded person that feels people are equal. They aren't. Are you one?
I believe that human capabilities (physical and/or intellectual) are disbursed in the general population along the "normal distribution"
#8. To: Willie Green (#7)
No, I'm an engineer. I believe that human capabilities (physical and/or intellectual) are disbursed in the general population along the "normal distribution"
#9. To: A K A Stone (#8)
Generally speaking. Are blacks smarter then whites?
All people ARE created intellectually equal in that respect. They are all dispersed equally along the same normal distribution regardless whether their skin pigment is black, white, brown, yellow, red, olive or whatever other shade of human pigmentation there is.
#12. To: Willie Green (#9)
#16. To: Dead Culture Watch (#12)
What studies/books have you read that have formed your opinions on this subject?
#17. To: Willie Green (#16)
#19. To: Dead Culture Watch (#17)
Umm, maybe you might wish to answer the question?
#20. To: Willie Green (#19)
#64. To: Dead Culture Watch, Willie Green (#20)
(Edited)
The question is, where did you get the information used to have the opinion, that I think you do.
#67. To: A Pole (#64)
High IQ means that you are a good puzzle solver or efficient corporate drone.
#68. To: sneakypete (#67)
"High IQ means that you are a good puzzle solver or efficient corporate drone."
#69. To: A Pole (#68)
How did you conclude that I am not good in solving puzzles or playing video games?
#70. To: sneakypete (#69)
I conclude you don't have a very high IQ because you think crap like that proves you do,because you are a leftist,and because of the enormous chip on your shoulder.
Replies to Comment # 70.
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