Room for improvement: A study of overconfidence in numerical skills among British graduates

Abstract

The experiment tested overconfidence in number skills among British graduates and non-graduates. The data were collected at a residential management training programme for part-time professional students. The aim of the research was to test whether graduate professionals, due to their higher qualifications, overstated their numeracy abilities compared to non-graduates. The experiment, conducted using E-prime, showed a significant interaction between the level of qualification and the overstatement of numerical abilities. The results support the hypotheses and showed that graduates rated themselves higher than their actual abilities: their test performance was not consistent with their confidence estimates. The findings are significant in relation to rethinking higher education curricula, which are currently under pressure to align with the needs of the economy. The authors advocate more inclusive and interpretive research for a greater understanding of the relevant issues to offer useful policy data and help higher education institutions prepare their graduates for task fulfilment and decision-making in a dynamic workplace. To date, few experiments have tested the numeracy level of graduates to corroborate the narrative communicated by employers. This study, despite the limited sample, is a first attempt and will serve as a reference for future, wider studies.