file photo by ArtChick
Updated on June 25, 2017 at 7:19 AMPosted on June 25, 2017 at 7:18 AM
BY AMANDA HOOVER
For NJ.com
With the 4th of July just around the corner, families are getting ready to kickoff the summer at the Jersey Shore — and so are the hundreds of people up and down the state who don red suits and spend their summers perched by the ocean, eyes fixed on the waves, waiting to make a move if any of the swimmers appear in distress.
But in recent years, finding qualified — and enough — lifeguards to fill those stands has become more challenging for New Jersey’s beach patrols. Coastal living expenses, demanding college athletic programs and a difficult job market post-graduation are partially to blame.
Amber Athey Investigative Reporter@amber_atheyon Mar 09, 2017 at 8:26 AM EDT
An experiment designed to reveal gender bias by reenacting the presidential debates with the candidates’ genders reversed found that Hillary Clinton would have been even less likeable as a man.
The two NYU professors who designed the experiment were “unsettled” to discover that audience members actually found Trump’s style more endearing when it came from a woman.
One female audience member even remarked that she found the male version of Clinton “very punchable” because he smiled so much.
A new study seeking to measure the overall competency of age groups throughout the globe has found that American Millennials are without a doubt the least skilled population in the world.
The ETS study tested individuals aged 16 to 65 across 23 countries, and measured Literacy, Numeracy, and “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.” Across the board American Millennials scored a ‘feeble wet fart’ on the competency scale when compared with their foreign counterparts. Long thought to be the most technologically savvy and educated generation in history, American Millennials (people aged 16-34) just can’t hack it when it comes to the skills employers are looking for.
Japan crushed it, but there was no indication as to whether or not the Japanese culture’s infatuation with tentacle porn had any bearing on workplace competency.
Here are some key findings from the ETS study:
In literacy, U.S. millennials scored lower than 15 of the 22 participating countries. Only millennials in Spain and Italy had lower scores.
In numeracy (ability to apply math to everyday situations), U.S. millennials ranked last, along with Italy and Spain.
In PS-TRE (problem solving in a technology rich environment), U.S. millennials also ranked last, along with the Slovak Republic, Ireland, and Poland.
The youngest segment of the U.S. millennial cohort (16- to 24-year-olds), who could be in the labor force for the next 50 years, ranked last in numeracy along with Italy and among the bottom countries in PS-TRE. In literacy, they scored higher than their peers in Italy and Spain.
Top-scoring U.S. millennials (those at the 90th percentile) scored lower than top-scoring millennials in 15 of the 22 participating countries, and only scored higher than their peers in Spain.
Low-scoring U.S. millennials (those at the 10th percentile) ranked last along with Italy and England/Northern Ireland and scored lower than millennials in 19 participating countries.
Although a greater percentage of young adults in the U.S. are attaining higher levels of education since 2003, the numeracy scores of U.S. millennials whose highest level of education is high school and above high school have declined.
U.S. millennials with a four-year bachelor’s degree scored higher in numeracy than their counterparts in only two countries: Poland and Spain.
To summarize: American Millennials are the overall worst generation in the world when it comes to useful skills. Even if American Millennials didn’t finish dead last in EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY, they managed to finish at or near the bottom across the board.
We American Millennials are really, really good at using today’s technology.
That’s probably because we’ve forced companies to make technology that’s extremely easy to use, and that’s better at doing our day-to-day tasks than we are. But with easy power comes no responsibility, it seems. According to a new study, we’re some of the least skilled people in the world.
Fortune reports that Generation Y Americans (those born after 1980) lag behind their overseas peers in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments. Researchers at the Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), who conducted the study, administered a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, to measure the job skills of adults in 23 countries.
