[lbo-talk] RE: literacy

[joanna bujes]

Miles writes:
--The obvious confound here: a higher proportion of people went to
college in the 70s than in the 50s.  Differences in the quality of
the essays could be due to selectivity.  (Now that I think about
it, perhaps this "ignorant youth" meme is nothing more than a
base-rate fallacy?)"

That's quite possibly true. But the essays I was comparing were essays written in the 50's at UC Berkeley with essays written in the 70's at UC Berkeley. Berkeley reportedly admits the upper 12% of graduating seniors. So, we're still looking at a pretty select group...in both batches.

Joanna