Six skills to learn in college

I am planning to hand out the following to my large, general-ed, intro-astronomy-for-non-majors class. What do you think? It doesn't need to be longer, since it's probably too long for many of them to take the time to read. What should I cut?

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Six skills to learn in college

Have you heard the old saying that college is just about getting a fancy piece of paper? This is no longer true. For an education to be worth anything for employment after graduation, students need to learn skills.

No matter what your major, while you are in college, learn these six skills.

(1) Think critically and carefully, which means reason and question.

(2) Read carefully and closely, with good retention.

(3) Find things out by doing serious research. Google and Wikipedia do not count.

(4) Write something that someone might actually want to read.

(5) Become proficient in mathematics. Math is your friend: employers will think you are valuable if you can use mathematics well enough to solve real-world problems. Computers and statistics can help here.

(6) Speak effectively in front of a group of people.

If you graduate without at least three of these skills, you have wasted your time.

This class is too large to help you learn public speaking. It can help you learn the other five skills. You can learn all these skills in most majors.

Correlation, Cause, Tomato, Tomahto

Seriously, I'd like nothing better than to find concrete proof that sitting through my classes will improve my students' health and longevity.

But this...

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver, New York University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill estimates the number of deaths that can be linked to differences in education, and finds that variation in the risk of death across education levels has widened considerably. The findings, published July 8 in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest that lacking education may be as deadly as being a current rather than former smoker. 

This isn't just headline hyperbole. The actual study in PLOS-one is titled

Mortality Attributable to Low Levels of Education in the United States

You're going to feel a pinch...

Have we all decided that "associated with" is now the same thing as "attributed to?" [1]

BRB, off to cure lung cancer and emphysema with my tooth-whitening kit. [2]

[1] The authors do cite  this article to support their claim of a causal relationship between education and health. The article itself, however, acknowledges the causal inference problem,  states, "We are unaware of randomized experiments of education at older ages [than preschool]," and concludes that "the identification of causality has proved challenging in studies linking education and income to health...A better understanding of the sorts of questions raised in this essay remains the task for the next generation of research on SES and health."

[2] Am I just going to snark, or do I have any actual constructive suggestions? Well both. Here's my idea: follow up on the participants in CUNY's ASAP program, who were randomly selected to receive a suite of academic and financial supports, and ended up completing their degrees at nearly twice the rate of the control group. 

From Darla.

I'm sorry I've not been around. A divorce, a change, just me and little Jake. I left my glorious job in the PNW and returned to my mother's home temporarily. But I bounced back, am teaching again, although at a reduced schedule and in a new location - where it is summer all the time.

But what has happened to this page? I read many months over the past two nights. Everyone is gone. Added a layer of sadness too much to bear. It was a place I loved when I was here. I had such fun. Of course there were tough times, but aren't there always.

Everything dies, maybe.

But I remember what was fondly.

XOXO,
Darla