Measurement error

At the COB Awards banquet last night I was sitting next to a very engaging manager from Target, the retail chain. I asked him what he wanted to see in terms of our ‘product’. He was clear that the two areas in which he would like to see improvement are soft skills (specifically he mentioned the ability to work well in project teams and ‘critical thinking’ (in my mind meaning the ability to think clearly, and articulate one’s chain of reasoning). There may be short term gains to teaching students the formula for this or that, or the piece of legislation that pertains to the other, but there must be sufficient time (and emphasis) given to the harder to quantify / measure aspects of what we do, because in the medium to long run, they are probably more important.