What businesses want: better writers (and readers)

Business majors (and any other career-minded folk):

Today's Charlotte Observer had this brief op-ed piece with important statistics about what employers most need. Read it here: LINK. (The story appears below, also.)

Why does this matter to you? If you work hard this semester, we'll help develop your communication skills for success now and later. And what's the bottom line? Mo' money when job time rolls around.

Employers want, but can't find, strong verbal skills

Survey finds mismatch between workforce and preferred skills.

Posted: Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

From George C. Leef, vice president for research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh:

On Oct. 2, 2006, the Conference Board, an organization of American businesses, released a survey, “Are They Really Ready for Work?” Based on responses from 431 employers, it hardly gives a ringing endorsement of our education system.

Only 10 percent of employers said they find graduates of two-year colleges “excellent” in overall preparation for work, and only 24 percent rated graduates of four-year colleges “excellent.”

The greatest area of deficiency they identified was in communications. About half of new workforce entrants with two-year degrees and more than one-fourth with four-year degrees are rated “deficient” in their ability to write and understand written material.

That finding is not surprising, given the results of last year's National Assessment of Adult Literacy, which concluded that literacy among college graduates was shockingly low – and falling.

What makes that so disturbing is that business leaders say communication skills are the most important for new workers. Nearly 90 percent of respondents said that those skills were “very important.” (Understanding math was “very important” to 64 percent and science “very important” to 33 percent. )

Those results underscore an important point. Most jobs don't call for deep academic background. Employers, for the most part, want people who are readily trainable and can work with others. Good language skills are of the greatest importance in that respect. …

How can it be that people who have gone through K-12 and then at least two years of college could be “deficient” in the use of English? … The problem starts early in our educational system. Reading and writing have been degraded in many schools. Try asking a teacher how much time is spent diagramming sentences and you're apt to get a blank stare. Tests don't often include essays, because grading them takes much more time .… It's little wonder many incoming college students have an aversion to the sort of work that builds reading and writing skills.

For The Record offers commentaries from various sources. The views are the writer's, and not necessarily those of the Observer editorial board.

(Note: this article is copyrighted and used here within Fair Use guidelines for an academic institution.)

Welcome to English 1101

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire

Hi! I'm glad you're taking my class. In English 1101, we (as in you, me, and your classmates) will prepare you for the various types of writing you’ll do in college (and beyond), regardless of your major. My primary objective during the semester is for your writing to demonstrate improvement—to me, but more importantly, to you.

Everything we’ll do together stems from this premise: You were born a writer. I cannot turn you into something you already are; however, I can help you explore and give voice to your unique, multi-faceted experience as a human being. How? Through a rigorous examination of the craft of writing. (See what I just did? I used a sentence fragment. Try that in high school, and you’re toast. In this class, we’ll revisit the rules so we can break them—or not—as each situation warrants.)

As Voltaire’s quote above suggests, we’ll use writing as a means to ask questions, the answers to which are neither right nor wrong. We’ll work toward the acceptance of doubt—in the writing process, as well as in life—through cultivating uncertainty. In other words, this class will challenge your intellect, invite you to see the world in new ways, and help you make informed choices about issues with many interesting and contradictory facets.

So, with this in mind, let's get underway exploring the great unknown...