George’s post on the workplace for college graduates brings to mind some of the recent reports from the workplace–not from academe or from researchers with little experience beyond the campus–that cite the meager talents of recent grads. One of them was by the College Board, entitled “Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . or A Ticket Out, A Survey of Business Leaders”. The Board surveyed corporate America on a range of issues related to workplace writing, and one of the consistent responses concerned the poor quality of prose written by younger workers with distinguished undergraduate degrees. “Corporations also express a fair degree of dissatisfaction with the writing of recent college graduates,” it stated, “and also with academic styles of writing, unsuited to workplace needs.” Here are a few remarks:
“Recent graduates arent’ even aware when things are wrong (singular/plural agreement, run-on sentences, and the like). I’m amazed they got through college.”
“The skills of new college graduates are deplorable–across the board; spelling, grammar, sentence structure . . . I can’t believe people come out of college now not knowing what a sentence is.”
More than 40 percent of the responding firms offer or require training or retraining in writing for salaried employees. Think of how much the failure of colleges to produce competent writers costs corporate America each year. This report set the figure at more than $3 billion!