Issues and challenges of statistical literacy in higher education

Statistical literacy is very important to describe and understand phenomena in real life. The relevance of statistical literacy is indicated by several definitions and researches which are well established in the statistical literature. A very important question is: what could universities do for statistical literacy? In 2012, the International Statistical Literacy Project set up special workgroups to examine statistical literacy in special target groups. One of them is higher education and research institutes. In fact, this target group comprises two subgroups: the first group consists of students and the other group consists of teachers and researchers. In the presentation, I review the issues of teaching statistics, the expected outcome concerning society without the required outcomes of the training programs, the expected level of statistical literacy of the non-statistician staff. I examine the expected entrance elements of the students (IT knowledge, mathematical knowledge, statistical knowledge, etc.), the kind of skills and knowledge which have added values to the efficiency of increasing statistical literacy concerning researchers and teachers. These include knowing the students ’ knowledgebase, special features of Y-Z generation, pedagogic and teaching methods, skills and ability of the teachers, information about the trends of teaching methods and researches, as well as the attitude and the knowledgebase of the teacher. Finally, I suggest activities by which the universities could improve statistical literacy