The U.S. education system isn’t adequately preparing students to use technology for problem-solving, according to a newly released analysis, which recommends what public schools and businesses can do to address that problem.
Change the Equation, a Washington-based organization promoting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, studies, looked at how American millennials—the first “digital natives” because they were born between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s after the advent of the Internet—fared in an international study of adult skills in 19 countries.
Researchers analyzed data from the 2012 Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which tested the key cognitive and workplace skills needed to participate in society.
While millennials may be adept at social media, the study found, 58 percent struggle to use digital tools and networks to solve relatively simple problems that involve skills like sorting, searching for, and emailing information from a spreadsheet, the study found.
