“Graduates aren’t skilled enough!” says a BBC headline.  What is your immediate reaction?  If you decide to find out more and read the article, you will see the following.

• A brief reference to a survey of a 174 organisations, half of whom are apparently moaning graduate skills.
• 3 brief interviews with recent graduates asking what they wish they had learned before starting their job.

After reading this, do you feel that a case has been made that universities are slipping up?  How much weight should you place on this article and the information it contains?  One of the major problems with news these days is that we are bombarded with articles about so many things that it can difficult to sort the good from the bad, especially when articles are referring to data in one way or another.  My Evidence Hierarchy provides a short cut to assess the usefulness of news articles and with a bit of practice, I hope the result will be less stress for you about what is going on in the world.

[Read more…] about Stats in the News #0 – The Evidence Hierarchy and how to use it