Walter Koschnitzke points out a new study that should be scaring the heck out of all professional service providers:

According to a study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, more than half to students at four-year colleges — and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges — lack the literacy to handle real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers. (Yahoo story)

The study finds that students fail to lock in key skills — no matter their field of study.  They cannot interpret an exercise and blood pressure table, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

If you don’t take this advice, don’t say I didn’t warn you.