Article By Jim Rowe

The Missing Link In Education

Poor Workforce Skills Of Critical Thinking & Communication

Executives Rate Recent Grads Poorly on Core Workforce Skills Yet They Are Often Not Taught

The Problem - Poor Critical Thinking & Communication Skills

Despite continuous research showing roughly 75% of hiring managers rate ‘critical thinking and communication’ as the most important skills they look for when hiring, for more than a decade they have also been consistently rating, from 50% to as high as 75% of recent grads they’ve hired, as “below proficient” in these foundational skills.

The negative impact on corporations is significant, it’s been going on for years, and it’s widespread. INC Magazine alone had 3 articles showing losses due to poor communication skills. The key metrics are -$400B lost from poor writing skills; -$37B lost due to mistakes from poor communication; and $3B is having to be spent on remedial writing training.

But, and with all due respect to corporations, it’s the impact on the students that is the most disconcerting. They’ve just spent $10k’s to $100k’s on a college education and they are below proficient in the top two foundational skills. That negatively impacts their career opportunities and growth. It also has a negative effect on our nation’s competitiveness in the world economy.

Why Are Critical Thinking & Communication Skills So Poor?

It’s not one cause. Certainly, part of it is the lingering impact of the Covid years. But it was going on before and after Covid. Next, I often get asked - “do you think it’s because young people today spend so much time on their cellphones?” Yes, I think that’s part of it. Because of cellphones and social media, young people actually write more often than at any other time in the history of man, but it’s mostly casual, interactive, and lacking structured thinking. A study of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers, on their perspective of how digital devices impact students writing, indicated that 68% of students take shortcuts and don’t put effort into writing; 46% write too fast and are careless; and 40% use poor spelling and grammar.

Also, ‘The Great Skills Gap’ book indicated that in the 2010’s, corporations’ need for more STEM skills led to writing / communication courses being replaced. Authors suggest bringing back the ARTS as priority courses and expanding the reference to the priority skills as STEAM courses due to the damage being done.

The Biggest Factor: Students Don’t Write Enough

To me the biggest factor is students don’t write enough. The book Academically Adrift had research indicating less than half of college students over 4 years had just 5 classes (12% of a typical 4 year / 40 classes degree) with 20 pages of writing required. Spread out over 4 years, that’s just not enough practice and experience to become proficient.

Furthermore, a 2022 study shows most tests are multiple choice. Of 1900 exams, 93% were multiple choice vs 7% open ended. Not surprisingly, the students’ grades were significantly better on multiple choice questions (71) than open-end (63). A conclusion from the study was, “open-ended questions are more challenging to answer for students with longer response times than multiple-choice questions, because they require more effort, and students have difficulty expressing their own opinions.” Multiple choice questions fail to require students to engage in prolonged, structured writing and critical thinking necessary for real-world problem solving. I tell students to applaud and thank those professors who give actual writing assignments, because it shows they care enough that they burden themselves with a long weekend of reading and grading 25-papers, so the students learn.

Why Writing Matters More Than We Ask Of Students To Do

Why is writing so important? To write is to think! We all agree with the immense importance of reading to gain more knowledge and greater perspectives on topics and difficult issues. However, Reading is “input”. It’s how perspectives and ideas enter the mind. The issue is that’s only half the requirement to learn AND make a difference. Writing is “output”. Writing forces you to slow down, make choices, and confront gaps in your own reasoning. Editing takes that process even further. When students revise their work, they aren’t just fixing grammar, they’re refining ideas, clarifying priorities, and strengthening logic. The result is a more clear, concise and compelling communication “output” to the intended audience. That’s why I tell students they won’t just become better writers. They’ll become better editors of their own thinking. And like any meaningful skill, it’s a process.

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Additionally, in several studies it appears that those who write with a pen/pencil have better grades than those who write with a keyboard. Writing is the conduit from your mind. You just don’t think about something, and it stays inside your brain. You put your thoughts into the world for you and others to read and consider. That’s why to me, The Pen Is the Most Powerful Thinking Tool Ever Invented!

The Writing Deficit

Starting with The Nations Report Card on Writing (last done in 2011), 73% of 12th graders and 40% of college graduates were below proficient in writing! 4 in 10 college grads can’t write proficiently! Wow! But why? Here’s one reason – teachers lack training:

I learned from a podcast guest of The National Writing Project that “teachers aren’t really taught to teach writing!” Then I found many don’t enjoy teaching writing because they don’t feel prepared to teach it. Here’s just two examples:

In a national survey of nearly 500 teachers, fewer than half reported that they had taken a college course focused on how to teach writing, and fewer than one-third had taken a class on how children learn to write — a gap that helps explain why only about 55% of teachers said they enjoy teaching writing.”

Other research shows a widespread lack of preparation: in some studies, as many as 70 % of teachers reported minimal or no training in how to teach writing during their teacher preparation, a factor linked with lower confidence in writing instruction.

This led me to study how we teach writing. In grade school we learn expository, descriptive and narrative writing. Great for learning sentence structure, vocabulary and punction etc. In high school we learn 'persuasive writing'. This is where we learn how writing helps us think. Typically taught by the English department, in its simplest form it provides two opposing opinions and asks the student to elaborate on which one they support and why. It’s a classically important step in the process of learning to both think and write. It forms the foundation of many careers such as law, journalism, and of course education.

But It's Where Writing Instruction Stops That Is The Core Issue

Herein lies the problem. There is nothing wrong with persuasive writing in and of itself. The issue I have is that the teaching of writing typically stops with persuasive writing. It doesn’t go to the next step, beyond academic style essays, to teach necessary ‘workforce skills’ which is the core issue missing in academic instruction.

Critical Thinking Instruction Is Even More Sparse

When it comes to Critical Thinking, a 2020 Reboot Foundation study indicated 60% of respondents have ‘never studied’ critical thinking in school. Not just having a course – but never having studied it!

So, it was no surprise to learn that while nearly all U.S. colleges (98%) list critical thinking as a general education outcome, very few departments have dedicated critical thinking courses.

Memorizing is not thinking. Many professors still require students to “memorize” content to measure learning outcomes. But as Albert Einstein said, “Education is not the learning of FACTS, but the training of the mind to THINK”. Unfortunately, beyond the sheer lack of explicit courses, for the most part, critical thinking isn’t specifically taught as a structured practice even ‘within’ most college courses. It’s positioned as an ‘outcome’ from taking the course. Why? Like in writing instruction, research suggests that many professors haven’t taken critical thinking courses themselves, which makes it difficult for them to teach these skills effectively. For comparison, while ‘communication skills’ books dominate retail categories (Amazon lists over 50,000 titles under Communications / Skills), materials explicitly focused on practical, step-by-step critical-thinking training are far less prevalent — the literature tends toward academic studies and curated ‘top 100’ lists rather than mass-market how-to systems.

Memorization Is Not Thinking "Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think." Albert Einstein

The Missing Link: Structured Writing & Structured Thinking to Teach Key Workforce Skills

As the phrase goes, the first step is to recognize and admit there’s a problem. Colleges and professors need to understand there really is a missing link. In many instances, lack of being trained themselves results in limited teaching of the core skills of critical thinking and communication which are essential workforce needs.

Importantly, workforce needs, doesn’t just mean ‘in business’. Workforce skills help everyday humans identify problems, make plans, and get things done, regardless of the topic or category – from household needs to a volunteer organization, even running a college.

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STRUCTURED WRITING

Starting with writing, a key consideration is that “executives are very busy”. They don’t want prose. They want the key facts and recommendations to make decisions, to solve problems, and to generate results. Quickly. The guiding principles of writing in the workforce are the 3 C’s – CLEAR, CONCISE, COMPELLING. Ideally, get the entire situation and recommendation down to 1-PAGE! I call it STRATEGIC WRITING, and we mostly don’t teach it. I remember being given a persuasive writing assignment in high school English class. One student asked where do I start? The teacher’s response was “start with an outline.” But we were never given nor taught how to think through and create the outline.

Strategic Writing starts with a simple, step-by-step format that forces the writer to think and communicate in logically structured process, that is both effective and efficient. An important word there is 'simple'. As Steve Jobs said, “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Back to the outline the teacher recommended. The step-by-step format of STRATEGIC WRITING is the outline! I tell people my whole career is based on a blank form! It becomes the integration of Critical Thinking and Communication. The structured 10-step approach of Strategic Writing comes from a standard Marketing Brief. Likely created ~75+ years ago by one of the major packaged goods companies, that established the field I did for a living (Brand Management), to help all executives in the organization think and communicate in the same structured format to be as efficient and effective as possible.

STRUCTURED THINKING

Moving to CRITICAL THINKING, it should be taught as a simple structured process. Fundamentally, marketing is a disciplined approach to problem solving. Based on 45 years as a marketer, agency president, and 30+ years as an agency owner, communication and critical thinking skills are our core competencies. So, I took the general approach I had always utilized and created The A-D-A-P-T-E-R Method, an acronym meaning Analyze - Deduce – Author – Perform – Tackle – Evaluate – Refine. Breaking out the holistic process in clear actionable steps helps the student delve deeper into each step. They learn how to become better at, for example in Analysis, uncovering and evaluating research data which brings up other questions, before drawing conclusions leading to Deducing different solutions to consider. It’s simple. It’s structured. It works. And it’s teachable across disciplines and different grade levels.

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The Mission = RESULTS!: To Measurably Improve Student Workforce Skills, Closing The Skills Gap, And Improve Their Career Opportunities & Employer Success

To date these two related approaches (Strategic Writing & The A-D-A-P-T-E-R Method), have been used by professors at both Angelo State University, TX and Kutztown University, PA among different class levels including Freshman, Junior/Seniors and Graduate students. The reaction among both students and professors has been that the structured format and processes are extremely positive for being simple to understand and simple to use.

If together we could close this wide and long-standing workforce skill gap, and start having college grads hit the ground in their new jobs running with strong writing and critical thinking skills, their careers and the careers of the professors that taught them, not to mention the organizations in which they work, will all be significantly more efficient, effective and enjoyable. Seems like a worthy mission to me and one that faculty are uniquely positioned to lead.

Contact me if you’d like to help. Jim Rowe.

PROFESSOR SUPPORT DUE TO RESULTS

“The results for the first pass were very positive. (After reading the books), we had both the freshman class and the senior class use a different project assignment with the ‘tool’ (The A-D-A-P-T-E-R Method). Both classes had self-admitted improvement in what they knew how to do. They said the tool was very helpful and the product that I got to see of student presentations and publications… they just did outstanding jobs. So, when I saw that your adapter method, which is a structured approach to problem-solving, I realized this adapter method, with the influence of a teacher, can be utilized in a very effective way from freshman clear up through seniors.

They had to take it and create with it. And the products were so much better than they had been during the past five years. I was very pleased, and I continued to use it into the next year. So, this wasn’t just a ‘once and done’! This was a piece where we did follow up. We did research, we did data analysis, we brought in one of the leading people in data analysis, and everything just was shining. It showed that progress was made, and without getting into all the numbers, there was a significant change in the product. It was right across the board. All of us that were involved were very excited to see that this product, utilized in the way it was, created such a positive outcome. Because the students saw it!

You did it, Jim. We just need to take our expertise and apply it so that it becomes a much better tool for our students to learn. So, all good teachers want our students to learn in the best way possible. This tool allows them to do that. And all we have to do is add our expertise into how we teach how to use that tool and create the right assignment that makes more of an experiential process out of it.

Just the extent to which you’ll go to help reach these kids. It’s just phenomenal! So, thank you.”

(From ‘Prof-Share Podcast’ with Dr. Duane Crider, Kutztown University, PA)

"I really enjoyed the message of Book-1. I just sat down and read the whole book in one sitting and felt it would be really good for our Freshman to have a basis of how to write and how to think.

Then with Book-2, I really wanted to sit down and take notes and think about how I could work this in with my presentations, not just for my students, but for me as a professional!

Doing things with the conciseness and purposefulness that make it effective. The Grad students really responded to Book-2. They felt like I did immediately, I need to look at this again on my next assignment,...this is 'practical', 'simple for me to understand', and 'I can use it right now!'

The (ducks fable) was a good analogy...it was easy to remember... an easy flow.

The second book had so many nuggets and they way you wrote it made it digestible. I've been thinking about other ways we can use it in speific instances to train in that type of setting..instead of just having the book."

(Q. Would you recommend them to other professors?) "Definitely! What you've done by creating projects with the books...teacher aid material...is just a game changer to be able to quickly include in your curriculum instead of the teacher having to do it individually. So I'd definitely recommend it. It's an easy read and all your students will be abe to read it and digest it.

(From Jim Rowe ‘Prof-Share Podcast’ with Dr. Veronica Snow, Angelo State University, TX)

"The benefits are Incredible! I thought the adapter method did a great job of making it hands on because the students will tell you they learn hands-on. I thought it was great at any level.

I agree with Veronica - every freshman should use it so they don't have to come to grad school to learn how to write! I've never heard anything but positive comments on the books. I even had a former student, who now runs a major high school English honors program involving literature and creative writing, said she read the books and wishes she could pick these books, but they are picked by the district.

Like you said at the very beginning, about the importance of being concise. My big thing is I like anything small. I gave my students an assignment and told them to pick a book with no more than 100 pages. One student chose to ignore that and picked a 300 page book. He eventually came to me and said ' you were right. It was boring and hard to keep reading.'

But then there was an undergrad who came in very unprepared. After he read the ducks book he said "it built my confidence! I used to panic and even skip class because I was worried I didn't feel I could do it. But after reading the books I realized...I could do this because it was right there in front of me ...I just followed the step-by-step process.' So from that students POV it was very positive. You're showing how there's a connection with experiential learning!"

(From Jim Rowe ‘Prof-Share Podcast’ with Dr. Warren Simpson, Angelo State University, TX)

"(Are you surprised by the data that I’ve shown.) No, I’m not surprised at all! I think students really need help with this. Students lack the skills to be able to think critically. You have to be able to communicate, and you need to be passionate, and I think those are a couple things that are really lost today.

(I feel like there’s a missing link in education, is that overly negative?) No no no I think your spot on I really do. I feel that education has probably assumed wrongfully that the students were getting this someplace else. I think since Covid things have definitely gotten worse. But this is certainly an area where we haven’t done a very good job.

I like your books. They get right to what students need to improve. You explain it in a way that is easy for all different levels to get. I think your books would be perfect for a freshman seminar class! The way that your books explain it is you take them step-by-step and it’s absolute genius. You can take all this information and put it into just one type-written page… just tell me what I need to know… that’s so interesting. I felt like the books were a tremendous help and they did a really good job

I felt like before they heard you and after they heard you (presenting to the class) was a total difference in their writing on the sponsorship letter which came after the fact.

Both books are easy reads, which is important today because we’re inundated. You can pick up the books, and you can get a lot out of them in a short amount of time. That’s what I really appreciate.

I always say to my students, look every day for a golden nugget. And you have lots of golden nuggets in each chapter.

I felt like book number 2 took book number 1 and extended it which was really good. I get a great step-by-step guide…being able to get to the heart of the issue…they need to learn to communicate better. They need to learn to be critical thinkers and you did an excellent job with that, so I would really recommend both books. They can read them quickly, they gain something from it, …and this is very practical. In this world of things not being very practical, I like the fact that you can read it, and you can say wow that was something I haven’t been doing. This is really good.

No one reacted negatively (to the ducks). I thought the content is excellent, and I think that the storytelling is a good way of getting your message across.

I would recommend that college professors…get the books …have your students read them, talk about them and I think that that’s going to help.

I think that we need to teach students to be more problem solvers. I’m always amazed at how many students can’t fix anything. We’re in a fixing culture. We have to fix this and I love that that about your books. You actually give them a template to show them how to fix something.

Kudos to your getting to the heart of the issue of what students need.

(From Jim Rowe ‘Prof-Share Podcast’ with Dr. Scott Bradshaw, Kutztown University, TX)

Jim Rowe BIO:

Jim Rowe is an educational author and speaker focused on closing the workforce skills gap by teaching practical frameworks for critical thinking and communication. His work emphasizes structured writing, creative thinking to solve problems, and immediately usable classroom practices. It's based upon a 45+ year career in Marketing including senior positions on the client side, agency side, and 30+ years of agency ownership as Sr. Partner, where he was also HR Director. Therefore, he has interviewed 100's of recent grads and hired and trained scores in these important skills.

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References:

NOTE: A dozen are listed from over 25 to date. Contact me f you want to see them all.