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How many fourth-year university students can correctly find information about holiday bus service from a website when given several links? How many can calculate the right amount of medicine to give to a child when the dosage is based on body weight? What proportion can figure out how much profit a company made from a table containing lists of income and expenses? One would hope the answer is all of them. It’s closer to 40 per cent.

Those are the findings of a new study that aimed to measure the literacy and numeracy gains from an undergraduate degree. Researchers gave standardized tests to 1,040 first-year students and 1,107 final-year students at eight universities in Ontario and found that only three in 10 freshman and four in 10 students in their final year were operating at the skill level required to complete those tasks.

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The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), the arms-length government agency that commissioned the research, says that universities have long claimed their graduates gain valuable skills, but those claims are “largely based on inference, opinion, gut feelings or aspirations.” Actually proving that students are learning is necessary, says HEQCO, because “society supports the sector generously so long as it is confident that the sector teaches Ontarians important skills that benefit both the individual and the economy.” They’re right, and the numbers from their study don’t do much for confidence in the system.