Universities graduate functional illiterates

Can eight per cent of university graduates in Canada really be functionally illiterate?

Unfortunately, that seems to be the sad truth—at least partly..

Can eight per cent of university graduates in Canada really be functionally illiterate? Yes and no, says Dr. Paul Nesbitt, supervisor of the Southam Literacy Survey.

"There really does seem to be a small number who get passed through university," Nesbitt says.

Other factors:

• People being surveyed sometimes exaggerate when asked about their education levels, saying for instance that they graduated from university when in fact they flunked out, perhaps because of a campus literacy test;
• Illiteracy rises steadily with age, almost doubling among university graduates when comparing the youngest and oldest groups. In effect, once-adequate skills erode with time;
• Foreign-born residents who say they have university degrees are three times as likely to be functionally illiterate as those born in Canada. If foreign-born grads are excluded, the illiteracy rate among graduates—all Canadian-born—drops to five per cent

Statistics aside, there's at least one fleshand-blood Canadian university graduate currently getting instruction in a literacy program.

Now middle-aged, this man was born into a wealthy family, attended private schools and graduated from one of Canada's best-known universities.

Said one literacy worker who knows the man: "It wouldn't surprise me to discover that his family were big contributors to that university." At the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Prof. Mark Holmes says students who failed the English proficiency test at the University of Alberta a few years ago still managed to pass their courses.

"They were succeeding in university without being literate," he says. "I don't think universities should be putting illiterate graduates out on the market."