In its December report, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), from the National Center for Education Statistics, found that prose literacy—the ability to comprehend and use information from “continuous text” such as newspaper articles—has declined significantly among college grads since 1992. Document literacy, enabling readers to understand noncontinuous text such as prescription labels and job applications, is also on the wane. Quantitative literacy, dealing with numbers, is more stable in the general population. The same survey given to college students about to graduate, however, indicates only basic levels of ability with numbers. The student survey, of 1,827 graduating students, was administered by the National Survey of America’s College Students. The NAAL survey included 19,000 adults over age 16 in households and prisons.

Overall, NAAL finds adult literacy hasn’t  changed much. On its survey, African-Americans score higher, Hispanics lower, and about 11 percent of U.S. adults are nonliterate, unable to answer the questions for the survey.

While the percentage of adults attaining higher education increased slightly between 1992 and 2003, prose literacy scores dropped among college graduates, per the NAAL survey, from 325 to 314. Among those who completed graduate studies, scores dropped further—from 340 to 327, and associate degree holders dropped from 306 to 298. Document literacy among graduate degree holders plunged from 328 to 311; college graduates scored 303 compared to 317 in 1992, and associate degree holders went down from 301 to 291.

At the same time, the percentage of people with graduate degrees who scored at a “proficient” level of prose literacy, the highest attainable, declined from 51 percent to 41 percent; college graduates dropped almost as far, from 40 percent to 31 percent.

Grover Whitehurst, who helped supervise the test, was quoted in the New York Times blaming the surge in television and Internet use for a decrease in reading for pleasure and a subsequent decline
in literacy.

“Until we view this as a systemic problem that involves our culture and our approach to higher education, and view education as a continuum that must have well-supported colleges and universities, this will not change,” warns Sue Kaufman, president of the United Professionals of Illinois/AFT and a professor of journalism at Eastern Illinois University.

Montana’s table fare reflects a trend in campus food services toward locally grown products enthusiastically embraced by students for a number of reasons: Food spends less time in transport, so it tastes fresher and has more nutritional value; it saves fossil fuel by avoiding trucking and air transport; and it pumps dollars into the local economy. In other words, no hard tomatoes trucked in from across the country and, in Montana’s case, close to $1 million for at least 38 different producers in the region around the university.

Founded by four University of Montana environmental studies graduate students, their advisor, associate professor Neva Hassanein (a University Faculty Association/AFT member) and the director of dining services, UM’s Farm to College is one of dozens of similar programs at public and private colleges across the nation. Time magazine reports that students forged IDs to get in on seasonal, regional food at Yale, and apple sales at Brown doubled when long-distance varieties were replaced with local Rhode Island Macouns and Winesaps. One might surmise that buying locally would increase costs, but at Montana, it reduced spoilage and pushed expenses down instead.

Hassanein, who is planning a field trip with students to one of the farms in tiny Culbertson, Mont., points out that the program makes for good teaching as well as good eating. In shortening the physical distance between production and consumption, it also reduces social distance between rural producers and urban consumers. It’s expanded into biodiesel production as well, taking oil from the kitchen fryers and reusing it in the campus “biobus.”

What’s next? Hassanein and her food services colleague Elliot Westwater would like Montana to become a model for other institutions.

We just want to try that legendary beef.