From every professor I know which is only a few, they state that students are getting less prepared for actual college work. I really think this problem mostly starts in the K-12 system. There are low expectations and grades are based on willingness to confirm to busy work rather than mastery of the subject. This was somewhat the case 25 years ago when I left high school for college and had gotten extreme.
What it means to have a high school education is diminished, due to grade inflation. Schools just want high school graduates to have 8th grade proficiency. Often students getting really good grades only have 8th grade proficiency. What made matters worse was that California and some other institutions stopped accepting SAT scores as a factor in admissions. This is something that MIT had experimented with and decided to scrap fairly quickly. This method has resulted in far more people qualifying for presigious schools and thus a complete innundation of applications to prestigious schools that the admissions department cannot possibly vet properly.
On top of that it's actually discriminatory to a certain type of student. One that has strong raw intelligence and a good work ethic but has uneven intelligence or suffered personal setbacks like homelessness or a parental death or breakup that caused them to miss of flounder in high school, thus taking them out of the running for being admitted into a school despite their strong abilities.
I personally never took a SAT test, instead I went to community college, which is another good way to vet who will succeed at a four year school. People who complete general education courses at community colleges have a very high rate of success in four year schools once they transfer. The issue is that only 15% or so of community college students actually complete general ed through community college.
Lastly, I think a lot of this is practical. I read somewhere that we reached "peak student" in 2017 or so. Meaning they was the peak amount of students that existed, since then lower fertility rates are producing less kids eligible for college, this means colleges are more desperate for students and have a vested interest in seeing a higher percentage of young people go to college in order to maintain their funding and institution.
40% of the population getting a bachelor's degree is probably too high. It diminishes degrees, and to accommodate that high of a percentage of society in college you kind of have to lower your standards. I completely agree with Kenya's idea about education, it is much more than just about learning a skill, it's about being a "serious person" the thing is, if you are just passing people through that don't have the ability to really meet this standard it loses that purpose. Colleges should be at least mildly elitist. Quickly it's becoming akin to what a high school diploma was in the 1960s.
Again I think this starts in elementary school. Education needs reform all the way through from the top to the bottom at every single grade level, in every single state. I think our society is ready to listen to reforms and studies like the one from San Diego are a wakeup call. In the lower grades bring back phonics, get rid of phones in class, stop giving A's out like they are candy, the average grade should be a C or B - depending on the class. Give students the option of testing to get right into four year schools or go to community college first.
Reforms do happen. In Mississippi they started teaching phonics as a rule and also holding kids that couldn't read back if they couldn't pass the reading proficiency test in 3rd grade, the result is their education system got better. Although there is an active debate about this, still it seems pretty clear this to some degree worked.
Moving away from phonics itself was a reform. I would argue that, this type of experimentation is good, because we find out if it works or does not work. We found out it doesn't and now across the country schools are switching back to phonics education albeit at different rates.
There seems to be a political consensus between both liberals and conservatives that allowing cellphones in class rooms is dumb, and there are reforms everywhere happening quickly that do just that.
One bigger problem is college standards for admission and pressure to graduate/pass college students from administrators, I don't see this going away any time soon. Although I can imagine higher standards, like requiring testing and not just grades. I also see that as college graduation rates get higher the value of a degree becomes diminished, it becomes more like a high school diploma used to be, a check mark to get ones foot in the door to an entry level position...if your lucky. Trade schools, the military, other avenues to get into career-like jobs might seem more and more appealing.
Colleges, will thus have to have lower standards to keep enrollment where it is currently which they have every reason to want to do. This means they won't want anyone to fail out, and want to accept as many people as they can. Test scores or not. Ways to increase standards is for there to be less colleges, which under these circumstances many smaller private liberal arts colleges will likely fold, another way is to attract more foreign students. Which I. The long run as long as the US college/university system maintains it's international prestige that might be doable. So even this seemingly difficult problem to solve probably will get solved.
Then as always there will be new problems.
And here is the thing in a dynamic society all institutions are in a constant state of reform, experimentations, fixing and breaking themselves. The fact that I am talking about this and there is an open social debate about what to do about education is a good thing. The US is so big that there are current counter examples of everything I spoke about happening somewhere. I know the California Institute of Technology prides itself as one of the most difficult schools to get into and one of the most difficult schools to actually complete, they hang their hat on that. I know there are Charter schools and private schools and even some public schools zagging and doing much different things than most schools.
What we don't want is a less dynamic society, if that happens then reform really is impossible.
Those reforms you are talking about are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
I hate the K-12 system. It failed me and it fails so many and it can’t be fundamentally fixed not to do so.
Please stop arguing with me and start listening to me. If you are too obsessed with arguing your own point and defending the system then you cannot understand why I have totally lost faith in it and urge others to flee from it.
I hear you. Your initial comment said that there is no hope for reform. You didn't add much to that.
I understand now, your point of view better because you added more context.
I also for the record didn't have a great time in elementary school and didn't really like school at all from K-12. That doesn't mean that I would have been better off homeschooled. For every kid with parents capable of competently homeschooling their a children there are two sets of parents that are incapable of that.
From every professor I know which is only a few, they state that students are getting less prepared for actual college work. I really think this problem mostly starts in the K-12 system. There are low expectations and grades are based on willingness to confirm to busy work rather than mastery of the subject. This was somewhat the case 25 years ago when I left high school for college and had gotten extreme.
What it means to have a high school education is diminished, due to grade inflation. Schools just want high school graduates to have 8th grade proficiency. Often students getting really good grades only have 8th grade proficiency. What made matters worse was that California and some other institutions stopped accepting SAT scores as a factor in admissions. This is something that MIT had experimented with and decided to scrap fairly quickly. This method has resulted in far more people qualifying for presigious schools and thus a complete innundation of applications to prestigious schools that the admissions department cannot possibly vet properly.
On top of that it's actually discriminatory to a certain type of student. One that has strong raw intelligence and a good work ethic but has uneven intelligence or suffered personal setbacks like homelessness or a parental death or breakup that caused them to miss of flounder in high school, thus taking them out of the running for being admitted into a school despite their strong abilities.
I personally never took a SAT test, instead I went to community college, which is another good way to vet who will succeed at a four year school. People who complete general education courses at community colleges have a very high rate of success in four year schools once they transfer. The issue is that only 15% or so of community college students actually complete general ed through community college.
Lastly, I think a lot of this is practical. I read somewhere that we reached "peak student" in 2017 or so. Meaning they was the peak amount of students that existed, since then lower fertility rates are producing less kids eligible for college, this means colleges are more desperate for students and have a vested interest in seeing a higher percentage of young people go to college in order to maintain their funding and institution.
40% of the population getting a bachelor's degree is probably too high. It diminishes degrees, and to accommodate that high of a percentage of society in college you kind of have to lower your standards. I completely agree with Kenya's idea about education, it is much more than just about learning a skill, it's about being a "serious person" the thing is, if you are just passing people through that don't have the ability to really meet this standard it loses that purpose. Colleges should be at least mildly elitist. Quickly it's becoming akin to what a high school diploma was in the 1960s.
Again I think this starts in elementary school. Education needs reform all the way through from the top to the bottom at every single grade level, in every single state. I think our society is ready to listen to reforms and studies like the one from San Diego are a wakeup call. In the lower grades bring back phonics, get rid of phones in class, stop giving A's out like they are candy, the average grade should be a C or B - depending on the class. Give students the option of testing to get right into four year schools or go to community college first.
Reform isn’t going to happen.
The only real solution I see is homeschooling. Abandon the system rather than try to fix something broken at its root.
Reforms do happen. In Mississippi they started teaching phonics as a rule and also holding kids that couldn't read back if they couldn't pass the reading proficiency test in 3rd grade, the result is their education system got better. Although there is an active debate about this, still it seems pretty clear this to some degree worked.
Moving away from phonics itself was a reform. I would argue that, this type of experimentation is good, because we find out if it works or does not work. We found out it doesn't and now across the country schools are switching back to phonics education albeit at different rates.
There seems to be a political consensus between both liberals and conservatives that allowing cellphones in class rooms is dumb, and there are reforms everywhere happening quickly that do just that.
One bigger problem is college standards for admission and pressure to graduate/pass college students from administrators, I don't see this going away any time soon. Although I can imagine higher standards, like requiring testing and not just grades. I also see that as college graduation rates get higher the value of a degree becomes diminished, it becomes more like a high school diploma used to be, a check mark to get ones foot in the door to an entry level position...if your lucky. Trade schools, the military, other avenues to get into career-like jobs might seem more and more appealing.
Colleges, will thus have to have lower standards to keep enrollment where it is currently which they have every reason to want to do. This means they won't want anyone to fail out, and want to accept as many people as they can. Test scores or not. Ways to increase standards is for there to be less colleges, which under these circumstances many smaller private liberal arts colleges will likely fold, another way is to attract more foreign students. Which I. The long run as long as the US college/university system maintains it's international prestige that might be doable. So even this seemingly difficult problem to solve probably will get solved.
Then as always there will be new problems.
And here is the thing in a dynamic society all institutions are in a constant state of reform, experimentations, fixing and breaking themselves. The fact that I am talking about this and there is an open social debate about what to do about education is a good thing. The US is so big that there are current counter examples of everything I spoke about happening somewhere. I know the California Institute of Technology prides itself as one of the most difficult schools to get into and one of the most difficult schools to actually complete, they hang their hat on that. I know there are Charter schools and private schools and even some public schools zagging and doing much different things than most schools.
What we don't want is a less dynamic society, if that happens then reform really is impossible.
You aren’t hearing me.
Those reforms you are talking about are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
I hate the K-12 system. It failed me and it fails so many and it can’t be fundamentally fixed not to do so.
Please stop arguing with me and start listening to me. If you are too obsessed with arguing your own point and defending the system then you cannot understand why I have totally lost faith in it and urge others to flee from it.
I hear you. Your initial comment said that there is no hope for reform. You didn't add much to that.
I understand now, your point of view better because you added more context.
I also for the record didn't have a great time in elementary school and didn't really like school at all from K-12. That doesn't mean that I would have been better off homeschooled. For every kid with parents capable of competently homeschooling their a children there are two sets of parents that are incapable of that.
I don’t think you are hearing me at all.