At a
time when “fake news” and online deception are topics of national debate, a
majority of 1,000 college students and recent workforce entrants, aged 18-31,
were unable to pass a basic, nine-question test of their digital literacy and
critical-thinking ability.
The second-annual
State of Critical Thinking survey commissioned by MindEdge Inc., a producer of
online courses, and conducted by ResearchNow, found that only 19% of its
millennial participants earned an “A” by answering eight or nine of the
questions correctly, down from 24% in the inaugural 2017 survey. More than half
couldn’t answer more than five questions correctly, earning a failing grade.
This
year’s results were also worse in every segment, whether broken out by age,
gender, or school type. For instance, in 2017 15% of students at two-year colleges
got eight to nine answers correct, but that fell to just 9% in 2018. At
four-year-plus colleges, 27% answered eight to nine questions correctly in
2017, but only 22% scored that well this year.
Contrary
to their test results, these “digital native” respondents expressed an unwarranted
confidence in their own capacity for critical thinking. Almost 60% said they
were very confident in their soft skills and 40%—up five points from 2017—claimed
to be very confident in their ability to see through bogus online content. At
the same time, just 57% of participants said they believe their peers and
colleagues are adept at critical thinking.