College Instagram posts with grammatical errors

[Anonymous]

My Instagram search history has led to my account to be spammed by "I'm joining the class of 2028 at this university" posts from kids all over the US.

It's shocking how many Ivy and similar admits are posting things that are grammatical nightmares: tense changes (multiple times), subject verb agreement errors, inconsistent pronouns, sentence fragments, spelling errors, etc.

I know these aren't graded essays but wow. It's something. Of note, the DMV area kids' posts all look pretty decent.

[Anonymous]

I thought you were going to say the colleges' posts had errors.

Writing skills are at an all-time low. One survey looked at the percentage of college students who had been asked to read more than 40 pages a week or write a paper that was 20 pages or more in a semester. As you can imagine, the numbers have dropped over time. I can't remember the specific study but it was referenced in Ron Lieber's The Price You Pay for College.

[Anonymous]

I’m in the legal field and people are graduating law school and entering this profession with stunningly terrible writing skills. It’s honestly quite shocking.

[Anonymous]

I taught undergraduates 25 years ago, as a TA in grad school, and it was abysmal then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My Instagram search history has led to my account to be spammed by "I'm joining the class of 2028 at this university" posts from kids all over the US.

It's shocking how many Ivy and similar admits are posting things that are grammatical nightmares: tense changes (multiple times), subject verb agreement errors, inconsistent pronouns, sentence fragments, spelling errors, etc.

I know these aren't graded essays but wow. It's something. Of note, the DMV area kids' posts all look pretty decent.

Seriously?

[Anonymous]

Holding Instagram posts to the same standards as formal writing is dumb, as is making sweeping generalizations about a generation based on a handful of social media posts served up by an algorithm.

[Anonymous]

Have you grabbed a college newspaper on any of your tours? It’s rough out there.

[Anonymous]

This is a consequence of no longer teaching penmanship and of not requiring students to draft their writing using pen and paper.

[Anonymous]

Because they don’t bother to check via ChatGPT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the legal field and people are graduating law school and entering this profession with stunningly terrible writing skills. It’s honestly quite shocking.

This makes me feel better than it’s universal and not just my kid. They don’t seem to teach spelling and grammar anymore.
I just saw a published article with neither/or. My grammar teacher is probably rolling over in her grave.

[Anonymous]

Subject/verb and tense agreement should be instinctive by senior year whether it's a paper or a one line email. It's crazy how bad it is.

[Anonymous]

A lot of K-12 schools have failed kids in teaching them what used to be basic, fundamental reading and writing skills. Many of them decided that teaching grammar was a waste of time. I don't know how these idiotic theories get a foothold in our systems, but they do and then years later, we waste time trying to recover from a stupid decision that was obviously not a good idea from the start.

[Anonymous]

You are the literal definition of a Karen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are the literal definition of a Karen.

Nope. Different poster. It's striking and concerning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in the legal field and people are graduating law school and entering this profession with stunningly terrible writing skills. It’s honestly quite shocking.

This makes me feel better than it’s universal and not just my kid. They don’t seem to teach spelling and grammar anymore.
I just saw a published article with neither/or. My grammar teacher is probably rolling over in her grave.

This makes me feel both better and worse too. I've been worried about how my daughter is going to write papers in college. She's STEM focused, but will still need to take a variety of classes where writing will be involved and her writing is awful. It makes me so depressed to see what's been happening in the schools regarding grammar, construction, etc.

I REALLY don't want this to devolve into a war between public and private school people, but I am curious. Should I assume that the writing instruction is a lot better in private schools? Or has it suffered too over the past 20 years or so?