At the top of my list would be Strunk and White's Elements of Style, with a practice composition after each section. While it would be lovely if they were familiar with the contents of Hirsch's "Core Knowledge Curriculum" (yes, even if just through sixth grade), it's their writing that tortures me. I'm on the brink of awarding automatic F's to any submission that confuses "there" with "their."

I occasionally get asked by the HR staff to interview college seniors during our annual "Super Interview Day". This is a day when we bring in around 200 college seniors to 10-12 offices throughout the country to interview for full-tmie positions starting after graduation. I should also note that we generally only invite students from maybe the top 20-30 schools in the country.

I'm an insurance broker, so one of the things we do is run the students through a little case study, to plumb for reading comprehension, writing ability, and some critical thinking skills. I’ve been through this process before, so I always ask that I speak with the candidates following their case study efforts. I get a copy of their writing product (they’re each provided with a laptop, and asked to write about 2 pages of their insights and conclusions), and have been uniformly disappointed with the writing and general communication skills of some of America’s top graduates. I wouldn’t hire many of these people to mow my lawn, let alone become part of my team in the office.

When confronted with simple and (I try!!!) constructive criticisms, the response I get are incredible. Poor writing has been blamed on the spell-checker (which apparently is also expected to construct sentences for the user) or the fact that not enough time was made available (they have about 45 minutes to read a three page scenario and write about 2pgs of reactions). Major logical flaws were chalked up to courses that they’re going to take next semester (name one college student that takes a serious course in their final semester), or the fact that the questions following the case scenario weren’t “specific enough”. When asked whether or not the candidates understood the fundamental predicates of the scenario, virtually every one insists that they “get it”, but none can put together more than 2-3 words that describe the case. In fact, most of the explanations that I get in the verbal portion of the discussion center around portions of the case scenario that the candidates were able to memorize. Never yet has more than one or two candidates been able to condense a short case down to 2 or 3 simple concepts that are critical to the analysis.

I agree with the earlier comment about Strunk and White – I > consult that book regularly, and I’ve been out of school for many (more than 30) years. I forced both my own kids to use it through their own schooling (only two more tuition payments to go…), and I can honestly expect that my own kids would fare much better in our little fishbowl than many of the country’s otherwise “elite” students.

When employers like me have to waste one or two years’ time re-educating college graduates about thinking, writing and communicating verbally, the value of these top-tier diplomas is greatly diminished in my mind. I’d rather hire a kid who can string together 10 simple words that make sense right out of the box than a group of self-indulgent bozos who wonder when they’ll be promoted to Senior Vice President.

Drew...is it even possible to re-educate graduates who *think* they have already been educated, and have an attitude of entitlement to go with that belief?

Any experience hiring military veterans, especially those who have serve in Iraq & Afghanistan. Some of these individuals have had experience working with local people, including sheikhs who are typically much older than them, and have probably developed some very useful skills in sorting out complex situations based on ambiguous data.

I wonder how many adults would get those questions correct? Memorization is important; however, when we require nothing but memorization students memorize for a test and forget. It's tricky to define what, exactly, students should know beyond basic skills. That's not to say we shouldn't try. (They should certainly know about the Civil War.) I'm not sure they need to know about Job--wouldn't that be indoctrination?

Jason -- Interesting question about Job. I agree that in this climate, it would probably be awfully tough to broach that subject and not be attacked. I can say from experience that it was not always that way. When I was a senior in high school (public, midwestern), taking world literature, the Norton Anthology was our text. It contained substantial passages from the Bible--along with plenty of Greek tragedies, selections from Augustine, and so on--as part of its section on ancient literature. These included Genesis, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, and more. I was raised in a non-churchgoing household, and had not had any exposure to the Bible to speak of. I really enjoyed getting that exposure in school--it explained a lot to me, and gave me a scaffolding for understanding (cultural, historical, philosophical, artistic) that I have built on ever since. And it was done in a totally matter of fact way -- "These are classic texts you should know so that you can understand the world. So read them, discuss them, think about them, and hopefully don't forget them." I'm glad I had that.

Yes, I wondered if you meant that--that kind of discussion would be valuable--but then I could see both the uber-religious and uber-atheistic making a fuss about it. And we don't seem to have the intestinal fortitude to tell those people to shut it.

The law of diminishing returns explains why you can't expect people to be well educated just because they've been through all this lengthy and expensive schooling.