Literacy Deficiencies in University Students. A Chain of Responsibilities

The extreme degree of illiteracy, absolute illiteracy, is easily identified and is incorporated in the statistics of the countries. However, there is another more generalized level of illiteracy that is not included in the statistics, and whose sequels are observed in daily life: Functional illiteracy, which refers to the inability to possess such mastery of literacy and arithmetic skills to enable the person to use their knowledge in favor of their own economic and social development as well as that of their community (Unesco, 1970). Functional illiteracy overlaps in the surveys because countries are interested in showing a very high percentage in the indicators of literate population.